


sentimentality, and where it gets you

by Griftings



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Consensual Rough Sex, F/M, Warg Arya Stark, Warging, Wights as Actual Zombies, just like a lot of smut and angst, not as humorous as the description may lead you to believe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-09
Packaged: 2020-06-24 04:15:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 39,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19716025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Griftings/pseuds/Griftings
Summary: They have a rhythm, a routine. They wake up, they wipe themselves down to keep clean, they eat. He counts their calories. They start the car and go. They picked up an atlas somewhere along the way. One of those huge old books filled with paper maps of the whole continent that show a bunch of roads, not just the major highways. She sets it in her lap and plays navigator. They follow rusted road signs and change directions at a whim. After a few hours they stop and pull out the solar panel to charge the sat radio and their phone. The alarm goes off. He turns the radio on and clicks the microphone twice. Pip pip. No one answers. She used to ask him what the point was but she doesn’t anymore. He’s allowed his eccentricities. They get back in the car and keep moving. Eventually they stop and find a safe spot to sleep. Sometimes they can't find somewhere safe. Sometimes they have to kill some wights first. The next morning they wake up and do it all over again. Where they’re going doesn’t matter but they never stay in one place for long. Tourists on a road trip at the end of the world.Or, The (Incomplete) Warg's Guide to Surviving the Wight Apocalypse with Your Mildly Sociopathic Ex-Hitman Friend with Benefits





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this is already finished and sits at roughly 40k. was going to upload it all at once but that seemed like a pretty hefty length for a oneshot, even for me. also cause that's just like a whole lot to edit, good god. second part incoming.
> 
> some notes: 1. warging is not referred to as warging. it'll make sense as you read it. that terminology just doesn't exist within the confines of this setting but the effect is basically the same. 2. arya's age is written ambiguously but is implied to be relatively young, as in mid to late teens. she has consensual sex with an older man frequently. this has some yucky connotations given that this is a modern setting and is acknowledged by the characters as kind of skeezy. feel free to age her up in your head if you want. it's ambiguous for a reason. just be aware that frequent references are made to her being underage. 3. this is a third person limited POV which means arya projects a lot of things onto jaqen to explain to herself why he does the things he does. this creates some internalized issues that, given her age, are problematic at best.

They have a routine. Nothing like a schedule, really. But there’s a semblance of structure, patterns they follow. They've had a lot of time to develop it. If this, then this. Life is just a series of reactions to circumstance.

They pass a car on the side of the road. Both of them glance at it in the rear-view mirror, then share a look. She shrugs. They can’t afford to pass up petrol. He slows, pulls the car into a three point turn, doubles back. They’re on a highway, but things like lanes and traffic violations don’t really matter anymore. They haven't passed another driver in weeks.

There’s movement in the car when they roll to a stop behind it. They share another look. He leaves their engine running, his door open. Hers is shut but her window is down. She can fit through it if she has to, he can't. Habits she’s had to learn, ones he’d had from the beginning. They both draw their guns. She misses her old pistol with the silencer. His Linebaugh is heavier than she’s used to but she’s not stupid enough to think she could use the shotgun effectively and he hadn’t even suggested letting her try. They pinser around the car, him to the left and her to the right. The movement inside stops. For about three seconds. And then hands slam into the window of the back passenger side.

She’d been expecting it and she still jumps. The body inside is half-rotted, flesh near to sloughing off, exposed bone in the hands and wrists when it bangs against the window. Muted through the glass and steel, the gurgling growls. The wight inside is young. Very young. A child. Decomposed enough to make determining sex impossible and missing a leg. The leg is laying on the floorboards. The bones of it are, anyway. Some tendon stills connects the fibula and the tibia in strings. Wights are stupid when it comes to feeding. They'll eat their own skin if it falls off fresh enough. It crawls from one side of the backseat to the other, pounding open-palmed on the windows as if unable to decide if it wants to threaten him on the left or her on the right. The two of them finish their circuit around the car wordlessly.

“Just this?” he asks once they’ve met back up at the hood of the car. Could be bait. Scavs do that sometimes. Leave traps for other scavs. Something nice guarded by a wight. Focus too much on how dangerous the dead are and you forget the living are dangerous too.

She closes her eyes, dips into that place inside of her that she doesn’t fully understand, and  _ reaches _ . Touching wights is like leaning over the side of an endless, fathomless hole in the ground, staring into the darkness and trying to squint to see if there’s light at the bottom, praying you don’t tip over and fall into the hole yourself. It’s like that, and it’s also like standing just outside the range of a rabid dog tethered to a wall, seeing the teeth snapping and hearing the growls and feeling the rush of air as it lunges at you, stopping scant centimeters away, and praying that the tether holds. And more than either of those things it’s cold. It’s very, incredibly cold.

She only feels the one. She touches it, to make sure. Digs. Digging can be hard sometimes. It's easier with people. Wights don't really have thoughts, they just have impressions. Beneath the fathomless nothing, beneath the snarling animal fury, she feels the overwhelming hunger, the coldness, the pain. The wight hasn't eaten in so long, so long. It hasn't seen anyone in so long. It's hungry, if they open the car door it can eat. It wants her to open the door. It's hungry! Open it!

Pulling back into herself is dizzying. When she stumbles back into awareness of her own body he catches her, a hand on her arm. His eyes are still searching their surroundings. “Someone left it here a while ago,” she says. "If it was a trap I doubt they'd have stuck around for it."

They don’t shoot the wight. Waste of bullets, too much noise. Who knows what’s in the woods around them. Don’t want to draw attention. Just in case. The body is too young and too weak and too rotted to be able to break through the windows. Disconcerting, to have it growling and gurgling and shuffling inside as they work. She’s used to ignoring that by now.

He pulls their car alongside the wight’s. Gets the hose from the trunk, sets it up and sucks at one end of it to start the siphon. She grabs the solar panel and the sat radio, climbs onto the roof of their car and unfolds the panel to get it charging. He only ever lets them set the radio to one frequency. No one else has ever tuned into it. She doesn’t see the point anymore. But they have their routines. She uses the solar panel to charge the radio and their phone. The phone is useless for purposes of communication, but they use the alarm and the flashlight app regularly. While she sits she keeps an eye out.

They’re somewhere in the Riverlands. Doesn’t matter where. They don’t have a destination anymore. They just stay on the move. The road is empty around them, trees to either side. This is the first car they’ve passed in a few days. Not uncommon. They're in the middle of nowhere. Sometimes, though, there are wights wandering through the woods. Sometimes they don’t scream when they see you. Sometimes they sneak up, silent as they can be on rotten feet. It’s quiet here on the road but she’s learned to be cautious.

There’s a bird singing somewhere close by, in the trees. The Riverlands in summer is beautiful and green. She almost hates the resilience of nature. Life is shit and the human race is dead but the trees still have leaves and the birds still sing.

He pulls the hose from his mouth, spits out petrol, sticks the end of it into the intake of their tank. She watches silently. They’re both silent. They don't talk much anymore. Years to get through the small talk. Familiarity. Not much to say. They used to have a second hose. He’d put them both into the tank they were taking petrol from, blow on the end of the second one, and the petrol would shoot right out through the first hose and into their tank. Physics or something. She didn’t get to have much formal education. Sometimes when she thinks about how little she actually knows about the world she feels stupid, but it’s not her fault. It’s not really anybody’s fault. Doesn't matter anyway. Wights don't give a fuck about physics or trigonometry or old Valyrian poetry. They don't give a fuck about anything but eating.

She misses that second hose, though. It’d gotten left behind when they’d last switched cars. Even as meticulous as he is he sometimes makes mistakes.

Siphon started, he leans against the side of the car. It’d be almost casual except that he still holds his shotgun at the ready. She stares down at the top of his head from where she sits on the roof. If she touches his hair it will feel greasy. She wants to touch his hair anyway. She doesn’t. He won’t appreciate it. He’s been in a sour mood for a few days now. He hates being dirty. They’ve been avoiding the rivers since the last time they’d run into a camp and had to fight their way back out. She’d lost her old pistol then. He doesn't blame her. It wasn't her fault. Just shitty luck. He isn't petty like that. But him not blaming her doesn't change that they don't go to the rivers anymore. Stupid girl.

The wight bangs around inside the other car. If she tries to  _ reach _ to it to calm it she knows it won’t work. She stopped trying that a long time ago. She still wants to try anyway. She doesn’t. It doesn’t make them angrier, because they don’t feel anger. It makes them hungrier. They don’t feel anything but hunger and they’re always hungry.

Their phone, still charging with the solar panel, starts vibrating. Their daily alarm. She reaches to cut it off immediately before it can make too much noise. They exchange looks again and she hands him the sat radio.

He switches it on, sets the volume low. Doesn’t touch the frequency dial. He never does. He still checks it every time anyway. She can never decide if he checks it to make sure it wasn’t jostled in their backpacks or if he’s making sure she hasn’t messed with it. She used to ask to use it to see if she could contact Jon. Jon was supposed to be dead but sometimes she still hoped. She tried, once. When she was younger. Snuck it out of his pack and switched it on, fiddled with the frequency. Tried to find some sort of noise besides static. They used to pick up transmissions between bandits. He stopped letting her listen after the thing with the Freys. After that they only used the radio for  _ his _ frequency, his little clicks that no one ever answers. It wasn’t fair. So she took it while he was asleep and listened.

He found out. Of course he did. He’d been furious. Of course he had. Fury on him is scarier than any wight. She knows what wights want, what they can do. She’s not really scared of wights anymore. People, though. People scare her. Even him. Especially him. She needs him and she trusts him, but she never lets herself forget that fear.

He’d left her. Just took his shit, all of it, and drove off. She waited for an hour and then started walking. He came back eventually. Before she’d gone more than a mile or two on foot. She’s too useful to leave for good and he knows it. She didn’t apologize. Neither did he. They don’t talk about it. She doesn’t ask to use the radio anymore. He still checks the frequency every day. She was younger then. She didn’t get it. People didn’t scare her yet. She gets it now. She may not have found Jon, but she could have found  _ someone, _ and then that someone could have found her.

There’s just white noise on the radio. Static. He clicks the microphone. Two clicks. It makes a pipping noise. He waits a few minutes before doing it again. They’re creatures of routine. No response. After five minutes he sighs, hands the radio back to her. She turns it off, plugs it back in to charge. She reaches down and runs her fingers through his hair. She was right, he doesn’t appreciate it. But he still lets her. Sometimes they are fluid, seamless, two halves of a whole. They’re like this when they fight together, when they’re scavenging. They don't have to talk, they just  _ do. _ Sometimes they are a give and take, and one must allow the other concessions. They are like this when things are calm. The breaths in between the life and death. It took them both a while to get used to it. That's fine. They've had time. They're accustomed.

When the siphon gets as much petrol as it can from the other car they get ready to go. They do another circuit, look inside the windows. She  _ reaches _ , distracts the wight into focusing on her while he inspects as closely as he can. She can keep its attention for now, but they’ll need to put it down if he has to open a door. It wants her to open a door. Open it! It's hungry! After a minute he touches her shoulder, breaks her concentration. She pulls away from the wight. It feels hungry and cold. Now she does too. Nothing of use in the car. He steers her towards their own, carefully takes his Linebaugh from her hands. They're trembling. She doesn’t touch the wights and dig in except for when there’s only one, or when they’re scouting. Never when she’s alone. Never when he’s not there with a gun to keep watch. Touching is easy in short bursts but digging is hard.

The petrol they’d taken adds a third of a tank to their car. Not much, not as much as they’d hoped, but worth the stop. They don’t have a schedule. No reason not to delay. There’s no destination. They take what they can get.

They don’t shoot the wight. They leave it in the car, still gurgling, still shuffling. Waste of bullets. It’s not a person anymore, it wouldn’t even be a mercy kill. It’s just hungry. Someday soon, enclosed in the car and trapped in the heat of summer, it’ll just melt. Turn to goo. It’ll lose its skin and organs and muscles. Eventually its brain will become mush. Then it won’t be anything. Not even hungry.

They drive. Back on the highway, miles pass. Trees pass. Her stomach grumbles.  _ Reaching _ always makes her metabolism speed up. It’s a downside, but the ability is too useful not to use. They’ve got a box of protein bars they scavenged from the last rest stop they’d passed a few days ago. They ration, usually. He’s strict about food since she needs more of it than a normal girl her size. They count calories, ingest only what they need. But she touched the wight twice on his direction and if she takes an extra meal today she knows he won’t stop her. She still doesn’t.

After a few hours they switch seats and he naps, his forehead pressed against the window. Her hands are tight on the wheel as she drives. He’d had to teach her how. Every time she drives she has to push the seat forward nearly a foot to reach the pedals. She feels cold and hungry. It’s hitting her harder than usual. Maybe because the wight was so young. Maybe because the body was so damaged. A lot of possible factors. She still doesn’t understand how or why she can do the things she can do or how they work. She was supposed to go North, to the Wall. Yoren said the Night’s Watch would figure it out why she was immune. That was their job. She thought maybe they could tell her about  _ reaching _ too. Maybe they could work on that. Plus, Jon was at the Wall. Jon mattered more than  _ reaching _ . But then Yoren died. So did Jon. The Wall fell. Not much mattered at all after that. She never got any answers. Life goes on.

She drives until her hands are shaking so much that her grip on the wheel is compromised, and then she pulls over to the side of the road. Long stretch of highway. Still nothing but trees. He wakes up when the tires slide from pavement to grass, when the car begins to rattle over uneven terrain. He looks at her for explanation, sees the trembling. His lips thin. He leans over to reach behind them, grabs his pack from the backseat. Pulls out their dinner. They’re eating early but neither of them comment. He's not especially sentimental. He shows concern in practical ways.

All that’s left of edible food these days is canned shit or shit with too many preservatives. They'll need to find something to raid soon. They're always running low on food and toiletries. They eat a couple of the protein bars and split a can of Spam. The meat tastes like brine but she eats it. After a few minutes the trembling stops. She sends him an apologetic look. He shakes his head. Not her fault. She knows it but it's nice that he knows it too. They get back on the road. She drives again, but it’s easier for her to concentrate. He’s awake but they don’t talk. They don’t really, not if they don’t have to. They usually don't have to. They’ve been with each other long enough that they don’t need to keep the other entertained. The rest of the day passes wordlessly.

When they stop for the night he gets out of the car and scouts while she stays behind. Normally she would scout instead, but somehow she knows in her gut that if she  _ reaches _ and touches another wight the trembling will start again. When she tells him this he accepts it without dispute. If she starts trembling again it'll be harder to stop.

She can do it for a while but there’s a limit. That limit is never concrete. She knows that irritates him because it's an unknown, a constantly shifting factor. Sometimes she can  _ reach _ out and touch a dozen wights in a day without shaking. Sometimes she gets nauseous just from touching one. They don't know why. Could be her. Could be the wights. Who knows. She had a seizure once. It wasn’t great. They don’t want a repeat. Touching him is easier. Touching humans is easier than touching wights anyway, but sometimes that's still a challenge to  _ reach _ out and then pull back into herself without getting discombobulated. He's easy. She can slip into him like breathing. Familiarity, probably. Saturation by proximity. She knows him so intimately that it doesn't hurt to  _ reach _ for him. She keeps her eyes on the road and the woods, and half her awareness on him. He feels warm. Sharp. He always feels sharp. When she touches him she feels the air in his lungs, the beat of his heart. It tastes like ginger and cloves. She matches her breaths to his. She knows when he comes back, isn’t surprised when he opens the door. She feels herself in his bones. He’s a liar. She doesn’t know how or about what, but he is. He always has been. It doesn’t matter anymore. She pulls away from his warmth. Cold, and hunger. Sometimes she doesn't know if she wants to be  _ like _ him or if she wants to  _ be _ him or if she wants to  _ consume _ him. Sometimes she wonders if she's just a wight that hasn't started rotting yet.

There’s a clearing a quarter mile off the road. They switch places again so he can drive through the forest, carefully dodging trees. It’s inconvenient, but they don’t leave the car behind and they don’t camp out in the open anymore. They’re not the only scavengers.

They park, pull out their blankets. They take turns sleeping in the backseat. Whoever's not on watch gets it. He barely fits and has to curl up, but it’s more comfortable than sleeping upright in one of the front seats. He's got first watch, so she stretches out in the back. He’s not surprised when she pulls at his shirt for him to join her. He does, sometimes, after she digs into wights. She gets cold. He warms her. She gets hungry. He fills her.

She rides him, sitting in his lap. His cock is thick, hard inside her. His hair is greasy between her fingers. She pulls it anyway. His mouth tastes like Spam and petrol. She kisses it anyway. His hands touch her breasts, her stomach. His thumb rubs her clit, below that to the place where he thrusts into her. He’s the only man she’s ever fucked. She’s been fucking him since she was probably too young to be acceptable. Neither of them care about that. He’s warm and he fills her up, so she doesn’t care. He’s not a particularly good man, so he doesn’t care either. Her parents are dead. The cops are dead. Anyone who would care is dead. So she fucks him.

She doesn’t take all her clothes off because she's in too much of a hurry to feel warm, but he likes her tits so he pulls her shirt up and tugs one out of her bra. He puts his mouth to her, lips around her nipple, tongue wet. She holds his face close, throws her head back. Gasps in time with his licks, his cock twitching inside her. He’s so fucking big, bigger than her fingers. Sometimes she feels like he’s going to split her in half. Sometimes it hurts. Sometimes when he's rough she bleeds afterwards. She likes it. She likes feeling something. Better than nothing. She'll take what she can get.

He bites her nipple. She keens. He chases the sound, kissing the swollen bud before moving his lips up, over the bunched fabric of her shirt. He kisses her throat. He kisses her mouth. She touches her tongue to his, licks into him. Petrol. Gods she misses that second hose. He swallows her moans, shushes her. She can’t afford to be loud. They’re quiet tonight, just the gasps and grunts of sex, but sometimes he talks to her. Sometimes he tells her how much he wants to hear her screaming, how much he wants to make her scream. She would. She’d scream. She has to stop herself from screaming now.

His thumb presses harder. Her clit throbs. When she comes he holds her mouth to his harshly, muffling the noises she makes. He growls when her cunt tightens, grinds in hard when she rocks desperately into him. When her whimpering stops and her twitching stills he pushes her onto her back, her knees up against his sides. He kneels in the space between her thighs. She’s so wet that his cock had slipped out when he shoved her over. They both hiss when he drives himself back in. The noise of their skin meeting is obscene, the moist slap of his testicles to the dripping lips of her twat. She lays back, spent. Soft noises punch out of her each time he thrusts.

Her other breast slips free of its cup. One of his hands on her hip to steady her as he fucks into her, the other raises to palm her tit. They bounce with the force of him, nipples hard and pink. He scrapes one with the nail of his thumb. It’s wet from her cunt, leaves a light glisten on her nipple. He growls again and bends to take it into his mouth. She knows what it tastes like. Sometimes when he fucks her he makes her lick him clean afterwards. She doesn’t mind. He returns the favor often enough.

The bend of his spine brings his hips even closer. His cock pounds deeper, deep enough that when the pleasure of her orgasm has faded it hurts. Like a pinch inside her. It’s a good hurt. No. It’s a bad hurt but she likes it and that makes it a good hurt.

He pulls her bra down further. She knows what he wants, but she  _ likes _ this bra. It took a while to find another one that fit after he’d torn the last one. She puts a hand against his chest. He stops. She doesn’t like that. No, she does. She doesn’t like that he stops because she likes feeling him inside her but she likes that he does when she asks him to. She leans up, braces one hand on the seat behind her. He helps her unlatch the clapses. His eyes are fathomless and she stares into them. They slip off her shirt, her bra. His cock is still inside her, hard. To the hilt. Unyielding. When she squeezes the muscles of her cunt around it his hips rock forward. His balls meet the outer lips of her vagina with a wet slap.

She lays back again, lets him use her. One hand raises up over her head, the other hangs off the side of the seat. Their fluids will stain the fabric. Neither of them care. It’s already stained. Cum and sweat and blood. Not like resell value matters anymore. The thought makes her huff a laugh. He pounds into her. Not for the first time she wonders if maybe he doesn’t have her  _ reach _ for wights on purpose to make her cold, so he can warm her. But no. He’s too practical. He likes her cunt but he can get it for free. No need to risk trembling hands when she’s holding a gun.

Her tits sway. He’s watching them. She knows because she’s watching him. His cock twitches inside her. She could come again, but he’s too close to his own peak to get her there first and he’s earned his reward. She bites her lip when he pulls out. Her cunt squeezes around nothing. The emptiness leaves her feeling bereft, but he doesn’t come inside her anymore. He crawls forward on his knees, leans over her chest, thighs to either side of her stomach. He takes his cock in hand, pumps it hard several times. When he comes it’s quietly, nothing like her moaning and thrashing like a bitch in heat. He just breathes heavily, eyes on her tits as he comes on them messily. It's warm on her skin, viscous. Some reaches as high as her throat. Most of it is around her nipples. He sits back, panting, observing his handiwork. He likes to do that.

They kiss afterwards. Sometimes they don't. It depends on his mood, on her mood. Sometimes when they fuck they don't kiss at all. Tonight he draws her close, cleans the come off her chest. He kisses her. Soft. She likes when he's soft. It makes her feel soft too. She doesn't get to feel soft often. It's novel. His mouth still tastes like petrol but it tastes like his spunk too from where he'd licked it from her tits. They kiss and he watches while she brings herself off again with his hand, riding in his lap once more. After she comes she sucks his fingers clean. They kiss again. She likes kissing him.

He returns to the front seat. He's got first watch. It's why he napped earlier. She's sated. Warm. Not hungry, not anymore. The car smells like sex and sweat. Part of the fabric of the seat is still wet. She curls around it to avoid laying in it. Sleep comes easy.

He shakes her awake for her watch. The world is dark. Crickets chirp around him, cicadas scream. Somewhere far away an owl hoots. The Riverlands at night is not quiet. The resiliency of nature. "Lovely girl," he murmurs. It's the first time either of them have spoken since the afternoon before, when they'd first found the car with the wight in it. He kisses her when she stirs. It's easier for him to be affectionate at night. His mouth doesn't taste like petrol anymore.

They switch places. He curls up in the backseat, she sits behind the wheel. After a few minutes he begins to snore softly. He swears he doesn't. She doesn't care enough about being right to record it. She knows she is.

A few hours pass. Something outside moves, dry crackling of leaves beneath its feet. She doesn't turn the lights on and her eyes strain against the darkness. The something bumps into the hood of the car. His snores cease abruptly. The something gurgles. She  _ reaches. _ It's cold. And hungry. She digs.

_ Go away _ , she tells it.  _ There's no one here. _

It doesn't say anything back. It's hungry. It's so hungry.  _ No one here, _ she promises. It listens. Sometimes they don't. The wight groans and shuffles off, noises disappearing into the night.

They don't speak. His snoring doesn't resume, not for a long time. She holds her hands in her lap to keep them from shaking, his Linebaugh on the console. In the morning, after he scouts around and finds no wights, he fucks her again, slower, deeper. It hurts and she winces but when he tries to stop she doesn't let him. Hurt is better than cold. Hurt is better than hungry. Afterwards she eats a protein bar and he drives them back out of the woods.

The road keeps going and so do they.

* * *

They met when she was young. Younger. Probably too young, considering what they do to each other now.

Yoren was still alive then. He'd pulled her from King's Landing before the riots could really get into full swing. Her dad had only just died and she didn't know where her sister was, but the first outbreak had already started and Yoren wanted to get her North when he found out she was immune. Doesn't matter now. Anyway. He was still alive.

There was a convoy. People going to the Wall. Most of them were refugees Yoren picked up. Kids like her. In the wrong place at the wrong time kind of kids. None of them were special like her though. At first she was just special because of her dad. Then she was special because she couldn’t get infected. Yoren was the only one besides her who knew that though.

Some of them weren't kids. The Watch needed conscripts and wasn't picky. The Wall couldn’t afford to be.

The world valiantly lasted a few days before everything went completely to shit. The infection spread like a fire in a drought. King’s Landing declared a state of emergency for the entire country and then went dark three days later. Television went down. Internet went down. Yoren used his sat radio to keep in contact with the Watch. She got to talk to Jon, once. Reception wasn’t great. Yoren promised her that was normal that far North. Jon called her  _ little sister _ and told her he loved her and everything would be alright. That was the last time she ever heard his voice. She remembers the way it crackled with static when he said her name. The sweetest sound she's ever heard.

She met  _ him _ when the convoy had stopped a day or so south of Harrenhal. They originally planned to stop in the city until communications with the HPD ceased, too. Well. Communications didn’t cease. Whoever was on the other end of the sat radio died without turning it off. For the first few hours that Yoren checked the frequency they heard screaming. After that they just heard growling. Plans changed. They were going to navigate around Harrenhal instead. Nobody argued.

_ He _ was one of the convicts the Watch picked up for conscription. She’d heard rumors about what they did with conscripts up at the Wall. Sent them further North, except for the ones they experimented on. She’d asked uncle Benjen about it when she was a kid, if they actually experimented on people. Uncle Benjen had just smiled and told her she was very imaginative. She wonders sometimes if she could  _ reach _ back then and pluck the thoughts from his head, what would she find?

There were two others like him. Other convicts, that is. They weren’t very much like him at all beyond that. He was handsome and the other two weren’t. One of them didn’t talk. He just hissed. He smelled funny and she didn’t like him.

_ He _ was cleaning a gun. A big fucking gun. She didn’t know much about guns, except that her older brothers liked them. When she was little Robb and Jon would take her out to the woods and put giant headphones over her ears and stand behind her, hold her steady while she aimed Robb’s pistol and shot at a target taped to a tree.

They’d made eye contact. He’d smiled at her. On a whim, because she was still trying to figure it out, she  _ reached _ out and touched him. He was warm and smelled like ginger and cloves and he was a liar. She didn’t know how she knew that. She just did. He was a liar. And he felt her  _ reaching _ , she knew that too, because he stopped smiling. Nobody had ever felt her before. He stared at her. She hurried away.

The night the wights attacked they came out of the forest. Yoren died fast. There were ten cars for forty people. Thirteen people drove away. Two of the cars were turned over by the wights. They were smarter then, not so stupid with brainrot. They still swarmed. One of the cars crashed into a tree. The people that didn't get to a car were killed or started running. She hid in a tree. The wights couldn’t climb trees. Or maybe they could and just didn't realize it. Semantics. Doesn't matter. She watched Yoren get back up. His eyes were blue and his neck was torn open. But he was still moving.

It was a long night. The wights that didn't chase after people stuck around eating. Wights are stupid. They don't actually care about killing anyone. They just want to eat, and they only want to eat people that are alive. So they bite and they eat a little and then the people die and the wights lose interest and want to look for more people. And then those dead people become wights and those wights are hungry too. Dead stupid idiots.

When the wights left behind got bored of eating they'd wander. Whenever one of them got too close to her tree she  _ reached _ . And she dug in. She'd never dug in before. There was a certain amount of influence she had, a certain level of communication they could share. Like screaming at a feral dog, or a bear, and hoping it was confused enough to back off. They were hungry, so hungry, so she gave them things. Commands, urges. Less words and more impressions.  _ Go away _ , she told them. And away they went. After a couple hours passed she'd touched so many wights that she vomited. Shortly before dawn she was shivering so hard that when she startled at the sound of a gunshot she fell out of her tree.

Chance brought them together again. He’d come back the morning after the attack for Yoren’s sat radio and the two others were with him. He heard her hit the ground when she fell. When she came to his big fucking gun was in her face. The man without a nose was kicking at the last wight she’d sent away. He’d just shot it. The man with pointed teeth was making hissing noises and staring at her. His arm was bleeding. Something was wrong with him. He still smelled funny. No, he smelled worse. She  _ reached _ .

He was hungry.

_ Him _ , the handsome man with white streaks in his hair, cocked his head like a bird. He still had his gun pointed at her. She told him, “That one’s going to turn soon. He got bit, didn’t he? A few hours ago. When the wights came. He’s going to be one of them.” And she pointed to the hissing man.

The man with no nose whirled to her. “Shut the fuck up! He’s fine! He cut his arm!”

He raised an eyebrow. “How does a girl know he was bitten?” He had an accent she'd never heard before. She shrugged. She didn’t know how she knew. She just did.

“She’s lying!” the noseless man yelled. She wanted to shush him. There were still wights in the area. But she didn't because he started pointing his gun at her too. “He’s fine! Stupid bitch is lying!”

The foreign man considered her thoughtfully. He turned to his companion. “No, she’s not,” he said, and lifted his gun from her to shoot the noseless man in the head. Then he turned and shot the other man, the one who’d been bitten. The movement was easy. Over in two seconds. Almost practiced. He didn’t even blink.

She’d never seen someone kill someone else before. She almost saw her dad die, but then Yoren pulled her away. She’d seen wights kill people, and she’s seen people kill wights. In King’s Landing when the outbreak started. The night before. But the wights weren’t  _ people _ , not anymore. It wasn’t the same as watching a man shoot another man in the head.

“This man is named Jaqen H’ghar,” he told her after he helped her to her feet. He’d holstered his gun.

She remembering  _ reaching _ for him earlier, remembering touching him lightly. He was a liar. “No you’re not,” she said. He didn’t say anything to that. He just smiled at her again.

She probably shouldn’t have stayed with him.

She did anyway.

She still doesn’t know what his name is.

* * *

(They avoid towns and cities. Too high concentration of wights where human population used to be. They stick to country, to backroads, and loot what they can when they can. Sometimes, very rarely, they go to outposts and trade with other survivors. Usually when they're out of bullets. He asks around for information when they do. She listens. The infection is contained to Westeros. The Lannisters control King's Landing. Last she heard they'd walled up Flea Bottom and scourged the borough with fire. Essosi relief organizations airdrop supplies outside the major cities, but the planes never touch Westerosi soil. Can't risk contamination. Essos still lives. The sea protects them since wights can't swim. Most of these supplies are immediately taken by Lannisters or Freys. Scavengers like the two of them don't see any of it, not unless they kill for them. He avoids violence, when they can. She can't get infected but she can still get shot. They don't tell people she's immune. If there are others like her those people don't talk about it either, except for when they beg.

They eat wild vegetables when they have to, fish a lot. Fishing doesn’t require bullets. Once the road took them further South into the Reach and they lived in an abandoned farm house with an overgrown apple orchard for a full two months. It was the longest they’ve ever stayed in one place. They ate apples and trapped squirrels and rabbits that got into the little vegetable garden. They fucked in every room in the house and slept in an actual bed together and when the sheets got dirty they washed them by hand in the little creek out back and hung them out to dry. She started calling it home in her head. Stupid girl. Too sentimental. They got chased out by some assholes with a couple of AKs. They don't have a home. The road is home.

They scavenge, when they find places to scavenge from that aren’t infested. They can kill wights easily, especially when she  _ reaches _ , but bullets are scarce these days. Nobody makes them anymore, and the first few years after the outbreak people used them a lot. The Lannisters and the Freys hoard all the weapons the Essosi airdrop. Another reason why they avoid wights. Too risky to get into melee range to try to behead them. They can do it if they have to. He’s got a machete. She’s got a baseball bat. She doesn’t have the arm strength that he does, can’t cut through the neck like he can. Shit stops moving when you beat it enough times in the head, though. Don’t need arm strength for that. Just good aim. Still. Too risky.

She won’t turn if she gets bitten, but he will. They still don’t know why she’s immune, why she’s able to  _ reach _ . They never did make it to the Wall. They’d planned on it, before, even after Yoren died. Nowhere else to go. The Wall was their best bet. But then they heard over the sat radio about the Wall coming down, about the Watch being overrun. Picked up a transmission between some Frey bandits bragging about a massacre at Winterfell. She wanted to find the bandits. He said no. She left anyway. He followed.

When they eventually tracked down the Freys she  _ reached _ out and touched them, verified the truth from their minds. Winterfell had been acting as a sanctuary for survivors in the North, safe from the outside because of its walls. It was sacked for supplies. The city was full of wights. The Wall had fallen. The Watch had ended. Her family was all dead. All of them. She could tell when people were lying when she touched them. The bandits weren’t.

She  _ reached _ further. Found some wights in the woods nearby. She touched them, and they were hungry. She told them,  _ I have food for you. _ And then she dug in, watched through their blue, blue eyes. And the Freys died. She'd never dug that hard before, or touched that many at once, or stayed in for so long. That’s when she had her seizure. That's when  _ reaching _ started to make her hungry.

They stopped going North, and he stopped letting her listen to the sat radio.)

* * *

They need petrol, and a new tire for the back left wheel. They’re running low on ibuprofen. They’re always low on food. She needs tampons because the wights can smell blood.

South of Sherrer they find a small dirt road leading off of the main highway. There used to be a gate at the mouth of the driveway but it's rusted off the hinges. It lays on the ground. They share a glance before pulling in. A ranch house sits a half mile off the road. The windows and doors are intact. There’s a sedan of a similar size to theirs in the driveway. The roof of the house and the car alike are covered in leaves, the neglect of years. They roll to a halt.

She  _ reaches _ . Two wights, in a basement. The house itself is empty. She doesn’t touch the wights, doesn’t dig into them. Unnecessary. “Two in the basement,” she says. Her hands are steady. He nods, grabs his Linebaugh and machete. She takes the baseball bat. He has better aim than she does and the shotgun is overkill for just two wights, and dangerous for the two of them in close quarters. Shouldn't waste the buckshot. He can pick the lock on the door but it’s easier to use her bat to punch in a window. No point in being quiet. She knocks as much jagged glass from the frame as she can before wrapping some towels around her hands and arms to protect them from cuts. He boosts her up and she slides into the house. It’s musty, smells like dust and mildew. There’s mold on the ceiling from the wet and rotten leaves collecting on the roof. Give it a year and the place will cave in. Maybe not even that long. She unlatches the front door for him and he slips through, closes it behind him.

They go from room to room together, opening doors and peeking inside and shutting them again. Her  _ reaching _ has never been wrong before but he doesn’t like to take chances. They find the door to the basement. The stairs leading down are steep and dark and seem sturdy enough. The air stinks of rot. The light shining through the open door only illuminates the first half of the stairs and the top part of the back wall across from them. They can’t see inside beyond that. There’s the sound of movement, the rattling and gurgling noises wights make in place of breathing. They shut the door quietly. Bar it, drag a small chest-height bookshelf in front of it. Wights can’t open doors but they can beat them in. They’ll need to go down there eventually. People keep tools in basements. Might be weapons, guns hidden by the previous occupants. For now it’ll keep. It’s kept for this long.

Once they clear the house they split up. She takes the right half of the house with her pack and he takes the left with his. They’ll overlap, look behind each other. She’ll miss something and so will he and the other will find it. Nature of being human. They have their routines.

There’s a thin slime in the sink in the kitchen, the refuse of dirty dishes left to rot and fester and mold. She doesn’t bother opening the fridge, but checks cabinets. Canned vegetables, canned chicken, peanut butter. Dry pasta. Somehow this house has managed to avoid looters before them. The boxed goods have been chewed into by rodents but the cans look good. An unopened tin of mixed nuts. This she cracks into and chews on as she looks. The cashews crunch beneath her teeth, bursts of salt on her tongue. It’s euphoric. Oh gods, some of those cans of chunky stews. They’ll need to try to find another backpack or suitcase or something here to haul everything back to the car.

In the master bedroom she goes through the drawers and closets. No weapons that she can find, but there are some clothes that may fit him. A box of jewelry that would fetch a pretty penny if people still used money for currency. A lockbox beneath the bed. She can’t open it, but he may be able to pick it. All of this she dumps onto the mattress to sort through more finely. Jewelry is useless but she's heard that some of the people in King's Landing still play dress-up sometimes, pretend the world hasn't gone down the toilet. Might be they can trade with other scavs who trade with the Lannisters. She picks through the jewelry box, finds a little silver necklace with a little heart with little diamonds set in it. The silver is burnished brown but that can be buffed off. Sansa would love it.

The thought strikes abruptly, like a slap. She doesn't think about her family much these days. Or rather, she tries not to. Doesn't have the time or the energy. Why bother? They're dead and she's not. She blinks. Drops the little necklace back in the box. Stupid girl.

The door to the adjoining bathroom sticks. She  _ reaches _ but doesn’t feel anything on the other side. She sets her shoulder against it and shoves until the door gives way. The window to the bathroom is broken and there’s a bird’s nest in the sink, animal shit on the floor. The medicine cabinet has two different kinds of prescription medicine in little orange bottles. She doesn’t recognize either of them. One says  _ take as needed for pain _ and the other  _ take one every 12 hours until gone _ . She throws them in her pack, just in case. Ibuprofen, acetaminophen. Both are half empty and she combines them into one bottle. Claritin and kid’s benadryl. He’ll want the Claritin. He’s allergic to ragweed, which grows in thick clusters in the South. The air conditioning in their last car didn't work and they'd drive with the windows down in the summer heat, his eyes red and streaming. She takes all this as well. The cabinets don’t have tampons, but there is an open bag of sanitary pads. She leaves these. Half of them have been shredded by some sort of animal. She picks the bird nest out of the sink and checks the faucet, just in case. No running water. It was a long shot.

One of the drawers is stocked like a first aid kit. Eyedrops. Neosporin. Two bottles of hydrogen peroxide, one unopened. She tests the opened one in the sink to see if it fizzes. It doesn’t, so she dumps it out and throws the emptied bottle to the side. Bandaids of varying sizes and compression bandages. A thermometer. An enema kit. Gloves. Gauze and thin wispy cheesecloth. A syringe. Antiseptic wipes. A stethoscope. A veritable jackpot of medical supplies. It almost seems weirdly prepared, until she spies the name tag hanging on a lanyard draped over the corner of the grimy mirror. It’s faded from sun exposure to the point where the picture and name are indistinguishable, but the letters  _ RRGH _ were printed in a dark enough blue to still be legible, and a holographic foil emblem of a leaping fish is embossed on the back.

She pulls the lanyard from the mirror and hops onto the counter, heedless of the dust and bird shit coating it. She turns the name tag over in her hands, traces the outline of the fish logo. She doesn’t realize how long she sits there thinking until he comes to find her. When he says her name quietly she jumps.

“Sorry,” she mumbles, embarrassed. He raises an eyebrow, glances down at what she holds. Biting her lip, she lifts it for him to see.

“Argh,” he says, reading it phonetically. Despite herself she smiles at it.

“RRGH,” she corrects. “Riverrun General Hospital. Whoever lived here was a nurse or a doctor.” She leans down, kicks lightly at her pack on the ground. “They were very well stocked on equipment. Now we are too.”

Nodding in approval, he bends to go through her pack and look over their haul. She looks down at the name tag again. Runs her thumbnail over the raised lines of the fish. Softly, she tells him, “My mother used to work there, before she married my father. Sort of. She was on the board of trustees, I think. Her family were donors.”

His rummaging slows and then stops. When she looks back up he is watching her carefully. She doesn’t cry often. She smiles sadly. Shakes her head at him. She won’t cry today. Lifts the hand not holding the lanyard and runs her fingers through his hair. She doesn’t have to reach far to do it. He’s kneeling on the ground to look through her bag. It’s oily against her skin and longer than he prefers to keep it. They'll both need a cut soon. She wishes selfishly that the water had been running so they could bathe. He’s always happier when he’s clean. He catches her hand, brings it to his mouth and kisses her fingertips. He rises, kisses her mouth next. It’s gentle. Sweet, or as sweet as he can be. He is not a man to whom sweetness comes naturally. His lips move slowly against hers. It is meant for comfort, not passion. She feels a swelling of heat between her legs anyway.

He rests their foreheads together briefly. Then he moves away to continue going through the pack. She has learned to savor these moments when he is demonstrative of his affection. They are few and far between when the two of them are not naked and rutting like animals. He does not ask questions about her mother. She does not offer information. He knows what he needs to know and she keeps what she needs to keep.

She knows nothing about him as a person. Nothing at all. If his family is dead or alive. Where he came from. How he ended up a conscript of the Watch.

She can make assumptions. She’s pretty sure he used to be a hitman or something. She knows he was comfortable with killing before the outbreak ever happened, before wights were ever a thing. She knows that he knows more about guns than her brothers ever did. She knows he can do field surgery and has survival skills like the people that used to be on TV shows, except his skills are real. He told her once that the people he kept trying to contact with the sat radio were his employers across the sea. He seemed convinced that they'd come for him if they knew he was still alive. She believes him. He's not a man prone to sentimentality, to assigning things or people more value than they're worth. Not even himself. She'd asked if he was still technically on payroll and made a dumb joke about making sure he got backpay. It was stupid but he'd laughed. He doesn't laugh often. He did at first, when they were sort of hopeful the epidemic would blow over quickly. Somewhere along the way he stopped smiling so much. She likes his smile. She likes his laugh. She knows that at least.

She didn't ask him what would happen to her if his employers came for him. He's already left her once. It doesn't matter that he came back. She's useful right now. She may not be later. He's not sentimental and she's not an idiot.

She hangs the lanyard back on the mirror carefully, touches it to stop it from swaying. A relic of a world and life long gone. It seems sacred to her, almost. A testament to a living person who had hopes and dreams. She is more sentimental than he is. She didn't ask and she's not an idiot, but she hopes he takes her with her if he leaves. He's all she has now.

He inspects the bathroom behind her and she goes to the other side of the house to check out the rooms he'd searched. In the room she assumes to be an office she finds cords. USB cables to various electronics. Ethernet hookups. The cable to an old model iPod. She uses her baseball bat to break open the chassis on the old desktop and starts tearing the innards apart, pulling out copper wires and coils. The noise draws his attention and he peeks his head into the room to watch for a moment before leaving once more. He puts less stock in trading than she does but outposts that have power generators love electrical shit. He likes to be self-sufficient. She gets it. But other people might have luckier finds than them. Stupid not to cooperate.

Less of use in the guest bathroom than the master's, but this one isn't covered in animal turds and she grabs a few towels that he'd missed that had fallen behind the toilet. Towels are always tremendously useful. They try to keep a dozen at a time. Bandages, blankets, wraps for their shoes when they're trying to be quiet. Not ideal, but she can tear those up and use them in place of pads if she has to. The guest bedroom has extra sheets sealed up in a plastic covering in the closet. She drags this out and sets it by the door. He won't think to toss the sheets they currently have because they're still serviceable. He's weird like that. In another world without wights he'd be one of those guys who patched his clothes up when they had giant tears instead of replacing them. She rolls her eyes. It doesn't matter if their current sheets  _ still work _ , they're covered in bloodstains and are worn thin.

In the closet she also finds a file cabinet. Curiosity begs her to open it so she does. Mostly it's empty but there's one folder inside filled with construction paper of a rainbow of colors, all crumpled and bent. She knows what's in it before she pulls it outs. A collection of a child's drawings, the linework wide and sloppy. One that she thinks might be a horse. One that's definitely some sort of Pokémon. One that looks like the house they're currently looting. Stick figures in crayon with too-big hands and too-big feet. A Picasso-esque rendition of a man, a woman, and a little girl. She assumes this because the smallest person, clearly the child, is wearing a pink triangle that's probably meant to be a skirt. They're standing together on a green field with little red flowers. The flowers have smiley faces drawn on them. The sun is also smiling and is wearing sunglasses. She used to do that when she was a kid, draw sunglasses on the sun. She thought it was cool. It's dated on the back, the way kids date things and pretend they'll be famous enough someday that someone will want to buy it. She doesn't know what year it is now, but it's dated a couple years before the infection hit.

There isn't a room in this house outfitted for a kid. Probably a grandchild. Probably dead now. Might be one of the wights in the basement downstairs.

She's sentimental. She takes the picture and folds it into neat little squares, sticks it in the back pocket of her jeans. She won't tell him about it. He won't appreciate it. Stupid girl.

In the stillness and silence of the house, she hears their phone vibrating across the kitchen counter where he'd left it. When she backtracks to find him, he's hauled a suitcase from wherever he found it to the kitchen and is kneeling on the floor, setting cans of food down into it gently and neatly. She turns his alarm off. He glances up at her. She raises an eyebrow in question. He nods.

His pack is in the living room, dropped by the old dusty couch. She opens it, rifles through until she finds the sat radio. Holds it in her hands for a moment.

Sometimes she still wants to use it. She's older now than she was last time. Smarter. She knows how to handle people better. She knows how to be afraid and how to turn that fear into caution. He thinks she's too sentimental. He thinks she might hear something on the radio that'll send her into the kind of fury she'd gone into with the Freys. He's practical. She's useful. She'll be less useful if she hurts herself. He wants her to stay useful.

He's a liar but she trusts him. She won't fuck with the radio today. Besides, she's lingered for too long already. If she doesn't bring it to him now he'll get suspicious.

He looks up from rearranging cans in the suitcase when she comes back into the kitchen. When she tosses him the radio he catches it. Turns it on. Clicks the microphone twice. Pip pip. She hops up on the counter, crunches from her tin of mixed nuts. She picks up a pecan, pauses with it poised at her lips. He likes pecans. She puts it back in the tin. They're a give and take. She wonders if that's what marriage is like. Not eating the pecans because someone else likes them. It's a stupid thought. She blushes. Good thing he's not paying attention.

Static on the radio. He hums thoughtfully, inspects the ingredients on the can of chunky beef stew. He's weird about what they eat, but he knows more than she does about preservatives and what's healthy for them to ingest after so much time has passed. It must pass inspection because he goes to put it in the suitcase.

"Wait," she says. He looks at her again. The eyebrow goes back up. She holds her hands out and after a moment he tosses the can to her underhanded. It's not a pop-top but she's got a can opener on her knife. She's had the knife for a while. It's one of those multi-purpose pieces of shit from Lys that goddamn everybody had a decade ago. It's also got a corkscrew and a little flathead screwdriver and a pair of scissors and a fish gutting knife and a sawtooth knife.

She took it from the body of the first man she'd ever killed. Just bad coincidence. They'd been silent, split up to loot a pharmacy and she'd stumbled on a stranger in the toiletries section. The guy drew first, but she shot before he did. She didn't even think about it. It was instinct. She shot the man in the chest and he crumbled. Then she shot him in the head, because he'd have come back as long as he had his head.

They had to leave the pharmacy without grabbing as much as they'd wanted because the gunshots drew the wights. That night, he'd had her describe it while he fucked her hard and deep. He came inside her when she gasped about how easy it was to pull the trigger. She'd seen him kill people before, he did it a lot. She just pretended she was him. It was like shooting a wight. No different. Easy. Instinct. After he came he went down on her and ate her out until she had to bite something to keep from crying aloud. He liked that she was dangerous too. They went back to the pharmacy the next day, once the wights had settled. When they split up again she grabbed some Plan B, dry swallowed it. In the toiletries section the dead man was still there with a big fucking hole in his head. Half his face was missing. Dried blood all over the floor, little grey bits of brain on the packages of toilet paper behind him. She did that. Some wights had gnawed on him. He was missing chunks of his arms. She searched his pockets and found the knife. She really, really likes that knife.

She uses it to open the can of stew. The fat from the meat makes it less of a broth and more of a congealed goo. It'd be better if she could warm it, but they weren't so lucky with the house that the kitchen came with a gas-top stove. It's fine. She's not picky. She opens drawers until she finds the one with silverware, wipes a spoon on her pants to get the dust off and digs into the stew. She can't remember the last time she had beef. She closes her eyes. She must make some kind of noise because when she opens them again he's watching her. He looks amused. Affectionate. It's an  _ oh, you _ sort of look. She drops from the counter to the floor and joins him. Digs the spoon back into the stew, shovels out a good chunk of meat. When she offers it to him he leans forward and wraps his lips around the spoon, taking it.

They share spoonfuls. She feeds him while he sorts cans to some method of organization that she can't follow. He clicks the microphone on the radio again. Pip pip. Static. No one answers. No one ever does. After a few minutes he shuts the radio off. He turns to her, lifts a hand and touches her jaw with his fingers. He kisses her soft. It tastes like beef and carrots. He doesn't usually kiss her this much in a single day unless they're having sex. He must be in a good mood from the unexpected haul of supplies. He hums against her lips. She turns and sets the can of stew aside.

They still need to check out the basement and deal with the wights. They'll do it later. Right now they trade kisses instead. It's easy. Simple. Instinct. She slides further down and his knees rise. He leans back against the cabinets and she unbuttons his jeans. His cock is still mostly soft when she pulls it out, puts her tongue on the head. It tastes like sweat and the gentle soap of baby wipes. They can't bathe regularly but they keep their genitals clean. Don't want to risk a UTI. It starts to become more firm when she wraps her lips around it, licks the underside of the ridge. His fingers slide into her hair and grip. "Lovely girl," he murmurs.

She swallows. Sucks. Presses little kisses against it. Mouths at the juncture of his cock and his balls. Licks those too. They're warm and salty against her tongue. When he's completely hard she takes him back between her lips and lets him push her head down into his lap. He sits thickly in her throat. She breathes through her nose, the air mostly obstructed by his girth. The texture against the back of her tongue is soft but rigid. She exhales. It stirs his pubic hair and he rocks against her face lightly. She swallows again, muscles squeezing him. He purrs her name and grinds into her once more. It took a lot of practice before she could hold all of him in her throat like this. He was a patient teacher. She was an eager student. She moans and it vibrates and he moans too in reply. He's not usually vocal during sex except for when she sucks him off.

Her knees and back are starting to hurt from the pressure that kneeling in this position puts on them. He runs his hands through her hair again, nails scratching against her scalp. He grabs a handful and rocks. He directs the motion of her head, works his hips in tandem. His cockhead bumps the back of her throat, against the roof of her mouth, back into her throat again. When his length twitches she feels it jump against her lips. His testicles press into her chin. Her eyes are closed from the effort of concentration to not gag and she tries to keep her jaw relaxed.

He thrusts hard suddenly, pelvic bone bumping painfully into her nose. She chokes. He pulls out enough so that she can breath, so just the slick head of his cock is in her mouth. She presses her tongue to his urethra, tastes his pre while he fists what isn't between her lips and pumps it. He's close but not close enough and she suckles at his cockhead, swallows around it. She lifts her hands, puts one on his thigh and the other around his balls. Squeezes both hands lightly. He groans, loud. His feet shift restlessly against the floor, searching for traction to lift his hips higher. She moves with him, sucking, licking. She presses her own thighs together. Her cunt is slick with arousal. The wet noises of suction fill the room. He hisses her name again, grabs for her hand resting on his thigh. Twines their fingers together. She opens her eyes, opens her mouth so he can see himself come against her tongue, his seed pooling at the back of her throat before she swallows. He likes to see his come on her, in her, dripping out of her. On her tits or her thighs or her face, in her mouth or her cunt or her ass. He's not sentimental but he's possessive and kind of gross. It's fine. She doesn't mind. She likes it. She's possessive too.

He rests the back of his head against the cabinet as she cleans him with her mouth, licks the pre and the cum off him, whatever she wasn't able to swallow down. He mumbles something in Braavosi. She doesn't speak it but she's picked up some words from him. Mostly swears. Sometimes on the road he'll get bored and quiz her on how much her knows. Whatever he says now, her name is in there somewhere. She holds him in her mouth until he softens, until his hand in her hair gently pulls her away. He draws her up, kisses her again. His tongue pushes against hers, tasting himself on it.

They get her pants off and he lays back on the floor, lets her ride his face, her cunt slick against his lips and chin. He sucks on her clit in a mimicry of how she'd sucked his cock, spears his tongue inside her. When she grinds down against his mouth he squeezes the cheeks of her ass between his hands. It'll leave red palm-shaped marks that she'll never see but she knows he likes to look at, when they have time to fuck each other slowly. He laps at the folds of her vagina's outer lips, slips his middle and forefinger into the warm wetness inside. Licks where his fingers spread her open. When they're slick enough for his liking he takes them out, moves them up. Circles them around the tight pucker of her asshole. No penetration but the feeling of it makes her moan.

She bites her lip. Looks down. Forces herself to watch him. His own eyes are closed, brows furrowed. Concentrating. It's the look he gets when he knows they're going to have to shoot something soon. The look when all his attention and being is focused on the task at hand. The task at hand at the moment is fucking her with his mouth. She whimpers. Presses her cunt against him to seek friction. His hands spread her asscheeks slightly in response. One of his thumbs rubs her hip as if to soothe. She comes with his tongue shoved up her twat as high as it can reach. She has to forcibly restrain a fervent cry.

She knows he cares about her. As much as he can care. She has learned over the years that he is incredibly aware of the impermanence of flesh. He has a hard time seeing people as  _ people. _ People are just walking, talking, shitting buckets of meat and blood to him. Helpful when it comes to killing other scavs and the odd Frey bandit that patrols the Riverlands. Less helpful when it comes to reliably working with the nicer survivors at outposts. She's useful, yes. She's immune. She can  _ reach _ and touch wights, influence them to an extent. She can put herself into riskier situations than he can. If she gets bitten they only have to worry about the physical damage. But he doesn't have to keep her happy to keep her useful. She needs him more than he needs her and they both know it. He's smarter than she is. He has survival skills. He keeps them alive. She’d stay with him even if he didn’t keep her happy. She doesn’t have much choice.

But he does keep her happy. He doesn't push her to  _ reach _ if she doesn't want to. He makes sure she comes too when he fucks her. He stops, the very rare times she asks him to stop. He gave her the Linebaugh even before they found the shotgun, even though he's a better shot. He wants her safe. He wants her happy. He cares about her. He's not sentimental and she knows he'll leave her if she stops being useful, but if she stays useful then he'll keep her. And maybe he'll take her with him, if he goes.

He drinks his fill from her cunt, pats her ass like you’d pat a horse or a dog. As if to say  _ good girl, well done. _ She tries not to preen. Shimmies back into her pants, cracks open a bottle of water. They wash their mouths out of each other's taste, spit in the sink. She leans against his side and finishes off the stew while he wraps up taking inventory of their new suitcase full of food. They haven’t found a haul like this in a long time. He must be very, very pleased. Once he’s done he closes the suitcase, zips it up. He turns to her and presses a kiss to the tip of her nose. It wrinkles reflexively. His lips smell like her sex. “It’s time,” he says. It’s like an adrenaline shot. All traces of post-coital drowsiness burn away. He rises, helps her to her feet. She leaves the empty stew can on the counter with the spoon still in it. The inhabitants of the house haven’t cared about its cleanliness for a long time.

They work together to drag the heavy suitcase filled with cans into the living room. Set it beside the old couch where their packs are resting. The couch is leather, has held up surprisingly well compared to the rest of the furniture. It’s covered in a layer of dust. There’s an indent worn into one of the seats, the cushion sagging inwards still after all this time. Somebody used to sit there a lot.

He hangs the machete off his belt. Grabs his Linebaugh and their heavy-duty metal security flashlight, the kind that you could brain someone with if you got enough momentum when you swung it. They don’t use it often because workable batteries are getting hard to find. She takes her baseball bat. They really need to find her another gun soon. When they move the bookcase it squeals as it slides across the floor. He winces. Before he can ask she  _ reaches _ . Getting more solid impressions is difficult without touching them, but she can feel where they are. Still in the basement. Not on the stairs. Somehow, despite all the noise they’ve made in the house, the wights still haven’t clued in to their presence.

Some wights are smarter than others. She doesn’t know how or why. He thinks it has something to do with how fresh they are. It makes sense. In the beginning, when the infection first hit, they had something almost like an animal intelligence. When they shuffled they shuffled in packs. They hunted, almost. They worked together in a way. And when they found prey they  _ swarmed. _ They were only just recently dead then though, mostly. These days there’s a lot less people to eat, a lot less live bodies to turn. Most of the wights now are half-rotted and falling apart. They’re dumber now. They bump into things. They react slower. They’re easier to manipulate when she touches them, but they’re colder too, and hungrier. Fresh wights are smarter but it doesn’t make her shake as much to  _ reach _ for them. It’s harder to pull completely back into herself with the older ones.

She draws away, returns to herself. Gives him a thumbs up. He nods, clicks his flashlight on. Carefully, slowly, he turns the knob on the door. Shines his light down the stairs for a split second before turning it off. The strobe effect leaves spots in her eyes from trying to adjust but it shows them that the stairs are intact and the wights aren’t waiting at the bottom of it. The basement smells like mildew and rancid meat. The air inside is stagnant and too warm. She barely restrains a cough. Readies her baseball bat. When he moves forward, puts one foot on the top step of the stairs, the wood creaks beneath his weight.

Something in the darkness below makes a wet rattling noise.

He shines his flashlight again, another split second. The bottom of the stairs is still clear. He takes another step.

He goes ahead of her. He’s got the gun. He’s a better shot, especially if they’ll have to try to shoot in the dark. She trusts him not to accidentally shoot her more than she trusts herself not to accidentally shoot him. One step. Another. Two more. The stairs are steep, the house built into the side of a hill and the basement dug into it. More gutteral gurgling. The wights know something is there, but not where. They can smell them, the warm blood in their veins.  _ Reaching _ doesn’t alert to her presence unless she touches them too. Halfway down the stairs he sets his foot down onto a step, lifts the other one to keep moving. The wood splinters beneath his weight with a crack. The light streaming in from the open door behind them illuminates just enough for her to see him pitch forward briefly and then drop straight down. The step under him gives way completely, causing him to fall through it up to his waist. His legs have disappeared from sight to presumably dangle in the air, his arms braced against the step above and the step below. He makes a noise like he’s been kicked in the stomach.

Why doesn't he just drop down? It's six feet to the ground, if that. It'd be easier, safer, than holding himself up with his arms. His hips aren't wide enough for him to be stuck in the space between intact steps. He's holding himself in place with his forearms. Why? She can't ask him. There isn't time. It doesn't matter at this point. He's kept the gun but dropped the flashlight. It rolls, clunk clunk clunk, down the stairs, light spinning as it goes before landing with a click. The wights below are screaming. The flashlight blinks and then turns off. Everything is dark. She can't see. She needs to see. She  _ reaches _ , touches, digs in. Sees.

The world is blue monochrome. Figures are more shadows than not, fractal, appearing both smaller and larger than they truly are. Like ice in her eyes. Wights see better in the dark than they do in the light. She doesn't know why. They're more active at night too. The sun makes them lethargic. They do better in the cold than the heat. For survivors, summer is the time for scavenging. Winter is the time for surviving. She smells blood, his blood. Why is he bleeding? No time, she's _hungry._ No she's not. She is! No she's _not._ _They_ are. She sees herself descend from the stairs at a run. Through the wight's eyes she counts, counts the steps carefully, counts the lifting and falling of her feet. It's disorienting, watching herself move. Basing her movements off of a perspective outside of herself. Like watching a movie in real-time while also being an actor in it. Half of her mind is in her body and the other half is in the wight's. She's both of them at once.

He shouts her name but she doesn't care she's  _ hungry. _ She's not! She's not hungry but they are.  _ Not food _ , she tells the wight. It doesn't listen. It smells the blood. Where is the other wight? She can't see it, can't control the one she's dug into enough to make it look for the other one. Not if she wants to keep moving forward without losing her grip on herself. Tethered at the edge of a endless, fathomless hole. She's looking down inside it. What happens if she falls? What happens if she digs deep enough inside the wight that she loses herself? She prays the tether holds.

She watches herself lift the bat. She's cold. She's hungry! She's closer to herself than he is, she ignores his blood and reaches her rotting hands towards her body. She smells the blood inside her veins. Eat! She's hungry! Blue and dark she sees herself swinging the bat. She cracks herself in the skull. It hurts! She's hungry! If she eats it'll stop hurting!

Her fingertips were scraped down to the bone years ago. She claws at herself. It hurts it hurts! Blood on her arm, warm and blue. In her other body the sludge of what used to be blood drains from her nose and ears. Eat! She swings the bat again. Her lower jaw was hanging by the thinnest string of tendon and falls to the ground. What's left of her tongue flops limply from the remains of her throat. She can still eat! She claws! She kicks herself in the knee. The patella shifted out of place somewhere between the time she’d died and now and the joint collapses under her. She falls to the ground. She crawls! She watches herself raise the bat over her head. She uses weight and momentum to bring it down. She breaks open her own skull and splatters her brain into paste. She doesn't die. She was already dead.

She gasps, reels. Doesn't so much return to her own body as she is flung back into it. The world is dark again, black. Blue slips away in a blur from the edges of her vision. She's never been inside something when it died before. Her head feels like it's been split open. She's dizzy, nauseous. Freezing.  _ Hungry. _ She wants to curl up on the floor and sleep for a year. She wants to eat and eat and eat and never stop eating.

She hears like through water the sound of him grunting in exertion. Hears like through water the angry snarling of the other wight. He needs her. She's useful. She  _ reaches _ . Finds. Digs.

She's clawing her way up the stairs. Her legs stopped working a long time ago, she got hungry and ate them. They were dead they didn't matter. He smells like blood he's warm she wants it! She can't move the wight's head to look at herself, has to guess at where she's moving, has to guess where she's aiming. She sees through the blue the way he shifts, stuck up to his hips in the space where the step broke under him. He tries to aim the gun at her but when he loosens his grip on the stairs and slides an inch or so down he winces, gasps in pain. More blood. Why is he bleeding? She doesn't care! So hungry! She grabs his arm and pulls it forwards toward her face her mouth her teeth so close so close! He flails, rearing back, slipping further down! More blood! The ecstacy, sanguine, fire in his veins! So hungry! So cold!  _ So close! _

She drops the bat, grabs the fetid flesh of her thigh, tugs. Her rotten teeth snap a split second too late. She rips hair from his arm but no skin. No! She was so close! She wants to eat! She whirls and bites at herself instead. The motion upends her balance, sends both of her crashing down the stairs. He shouts her name again. She rolls, fights herself. Feels all four of her arms reaching, all four of her hands scratching. She bites herself. Blood! But it's wrong? Wrong blood. It's warm but it's wrong. She's wrong! Stupid girl! She reaches, strains, grabs the metal flashlight from the floor and drives it into her eyes. They pop, goo dripping from the sockets. The blue explodes into blackness. She lifts the flashlight again, slams it down again. Eventually her gurgling quiets but she still claws weakly.

She pulls back. Away. Into herself. Stops digging, stops touching, stops  _ reaching _ . The world spins. Her gorge rises. No time to try to collect all the fragments of herself and piece them back together. The wight beneath her shudders violently, still trying to fight. She brings the flashlight down once more, twice more, three more times. She's not inside it anymore so she doesn't know which of the blows finishes it off but she doesn't stop beating it until it's head is a black smear on the concrete floor with sharp chunks of skull scattered around. She takes short, fast breaths and pushes herself to her feet. There are bits of teeth beneath her palms. Hair, tacky with blood and still attached to rotten scalp. She wipes it against her pants.

She takes a step, stumbles. She hears him struggling. She moves as if drunk towards the stairs. She killed herself. No she didn't. She killed a wight, but for a moment she was the wight she killed. No she wasn’t. She was  _ wearing _ the wight. She wasn’t the wight. She’s herself. There's a difference. There has to be. She clings to it.

"Lovely girl," he breathes when she reappears in the radius of light cast from the open doorway above. Her fingers feel numb but she makes them turn on the flashlight, shine it to where his lower half has fallen through the stairs. When she sets it down to help him out he makes a hissing noise, cuts it off. He grits his teeth and with her assistance makes himself rise. She finally sees the injury. A nail from the frame of the staircase stuck into the meat of his thigh, a line torn up towards his hip from where he'd lost his grip and slid downward a few inches. It bleeds freely. If it'd been any deeper or climbed any higher it could have nicked the artery. That's why he didn't let himself fall. The blood made the wights frenzy. Shitty luck. No way they could have predicted the step would give way, or that the nail would get him. Nobody's fault. Sometimes you do everything right and it still doesn't matter.

The rest of the stairs held her weight before but they don't take chances. He is much heavier than she is. Limping and bleeding, he climbs back up the stairs. She follows. The wights are dead. Whatever is in the basement will keep another five minutes.

They strip his pants off, clean the wound. Thank fuck one of those wights down there kept the first aid kit so well stocked. Antiseptic, the hydrogen peroxide. It’s deep but not terrible. He could have broken his leg but he didn't. Small miracles. A cut is nothing. He’s had worse, she’s bandaged him up from worse. It’ll scar but they’re used to scars. He won’t care about that and neither will she. It bleeds. His jeans are soaked red to the knee. They’ll have to get rid of them. She gets their sewing kit from his pack. He has to stitch himself. The adrenaline has worn off and her hands are shaking violently.

After they clean up him they clean up her. The wight had bitten her arm. A death sentence for anyone else. Just a nasty bite for her. They disinfect it carefully. She’s immune to the infection of the wights but not immune to infection of the flesh and a wight’s mouth isn’t the most sanitary place. There’s a clear indentation of teeth in her skin. The wound doesn’t bleed until they irritate it with the cleaning. When they bandage it, it spots red in the shape of a mouth. She’ll have to be careful until it heals. If they run into other scavs and they see the wound they’ll shoot her on sight. Nobody will believe her if they say she’s immune. People have used that excuse with them before. Cried it, screamed it. They shot them anyway. Can’t take risks. They don’t know why she’s immune but she is. She thinks. She hopes. It’s just, she’s so hungry. She could eat all of the food they’d just found. She could eat all the food in the world. When she unzips the suitcase holding their haul he doesn’t stop her.

Another can of stew, one of chicken. She needs protein. Craves meat. The rest of the mixed nuts. She eats the pecans and can’t care enough to feel bad about it. Caring is hard. The air stinks of blood. She has to get away from him. She’s not a wight. She’s not. She’s not. She just wore one for a bit. She’s her. She’s herself. She’s human. She’s alive alive alive. She’s so hungry. She wants to keep eating.

She leaves the house. He watches her go, doesn't stop her. Doesn't question it. She can't look at him, can't handle the possibility of suspicion on his face. Not when she feels so thin and fragile. Paces outside, breathes hard. It’s midafternoon and the Riverlands in summer is balmy. The air smells like warm dirt. The cicadas are screaming again. She focuses on that.

It’s fine. She doesn’t want to eat him. The wight did. She’s not a wight. The world outside is green and bright, the sunlight filtered in earth tones through the leaves on the trees. The only things that are blue are the things that are supposed to be blue. She counts them. The sky. The hydrangea bushes grown wild on the outside of the house. Her jeans. The little ceramic birdbath in the yard that’s been knocked over for who knows how long. See? They’re meant to be blue. The ice isn’t in her eyes anymore. They say when you get bitten and start to turn, that's one of the first things you notice. The hunger is first, obviously. But the color blue starts to take over. She's heard that people who are bitten and turn while they're still alive start mumbling about being cold and seeing blue.

She’s immune. She’s been bitten already. Several times. Nothing came from any of those. The wounds scabbed, some scarred. That was it. She stayed herself. The hunger and the cold was from  _ reaching _ , not because she was infected. It doesn’t happen that fast. She knows it doesn’t. It takes hours, sometimes up to a day, for someone to turn. The hunger was just because she dug in so hard. That's happened before.  _ Reaching  _ makes her hungry even when she doesn't dig. It’s fine. She’s fine.

When she comes back into the house she’s embarrassed over her lapse of control, has trouble meeting his eyes. He’s still sitting on the floor of the living room in his boxers. He’s wiped the blood from his skin with more of the antiseptic wipes but the wound is still red and irritated. Instead of looking at his face and seeing whatever expression he may be wearing she cleans up the mess of food cans. Winces at how much she’d eaten. As carefully as they ration that should have lasted a while. The stew alone is supposed to be three servings and she’s had two cans today already. He’s very strict about sticking to the suggested serving sizes.

She swallows. Opens her mouth to apologize. He beats her to the punch. “Forgive this man,” he says softly. It surprises her into looking at him. His eyes are solemn. Mouth turned down. She shakes her head, confused. What is there to forgive? He didn’t do anything wrong. Not his fault. Just shitty luck. “Forgive me,” he says again. “Lovely girl.” When he lifts his arm in invitation it’s like absolution. She sits on the floor beside him again, a mirror of their position in the kitchen earlier. Tucks herself against his side. His arm drapes over her shoulder, pulls her close.

She presses her nose into the skin of his throat. He smells like sweat and blood and dust. She  _ reaches _ , touches his warmth. Doesn’t dig, doesn’t settle into him like she did before with the wights. Just feels him. He’s alive. He’s alive. Bright and warm and alive. Ginger and cloves. A liar, but it doesn’t matter. It was so close. If she hadn't gotten to the wight first it would have bitten him. She can't lose him. She can't. She can't. She didn't. He’s alive and she’s alive. He kisses her hair. He’s not sentimental. She’s useful. He won’t get rid of her. She’s alive. He’s alive.

He breathes, she breathes. For now it’s enough.

* * *

The first time she was bitten was when the capitol evacuated. 

Her dad was the one that lobbied for citywide evacuation. The outbreak was still controlled then, still small isolated cases. Supposedly some minor airborne illness with rabies-like symptoms. Like the flu but it made you hungry and being hungry made you angry. Officials said to stay in your homes, keep your windows closed. Enjoy the break from work. Don't worry about it. It was being handled. Lies, of course. A cover up. Government wanted to keep it hush-hush. Her dad was trying to dig up the truth. Lawyers, you know? Her mom always said he’d stick his nose any place it didn’t belong. Yoren was working with him because he was part of the Watch. Anything wight-related was Watch business, even if the government was claiming it wasn’t wights. Wights were storybook monsters. Fabricated lies from North of the Wall to scare little kids into eating their vegetables and going to bed on time. The Watch was weird and paranoid and everyone knew it. That's why no one wanted to join.

Even after her dad had been gunned down it took a day or two for things to really go pear shaped. By the time they actually called to evacuate it was too late.

When they made the announcement Yoren grabbed her and ran. It was meant to be organized. What it ended up being was a shitshow. Half the people were rioting, looting. Taking advantage of confusion to smash windows and grab expensive electronics, clothes. Stupid petty shit. The smart people got guns. There were wights, but you couldn’t really tell they were wights. They weren’t rotting yet. They’d had to get from the heart of the city to the outer walls, where his big military convoy was. From Baelor’s on the Hill to the Gate of the Gods. They were on foot because the streets were clogged with traffic. By the time they got off Steel they passed more people covered in blood than not, more people drunk than not. Couldn’t tell a looter from a wight. Both were bloody, both stumbled around. Except that the wights had bright blue eyes and hungry expressions.

Yoren had her hand in his. He was tugging her along. It’d taken an hour of nonstop running from Baelor’s to get to the Gate and her legs were smaller than his. She was tired. She was scared. She was angry. Her dad was dead. Where was Sansa? She didn’t  _ get _ it. Someone grabbed her hair. She still had long hair then. They yanked and she was torn from Yoren’s grip. When she turned to scream threats at whoever had grabbed her she saw it was a fat boy a bit older than her maybe with bright, bright blue eyes and blood around his mouth. He kept pulling her closer and she kicked at his knees. He bit her wrist hard, hard enough to break the skin. He chewed. She  _ reached _ .

She didn’t know that’s what it was at the time. She just wanted to make him stop. She’d thought,  _ leave me alone! _ And she’d thought it loud enough and hard enough that the wight heard it. It stopped chewing. That’s when Yoren shot it in the head. “Move, girl!” he’d snapped at her. She moved.

They didn’t know at first that it was a true infection. That people who were bitten became infected, turned into wights themselves. The propaganda that it was airborne was spread too well. Too little was known about wights, even at the Watch. When they got to the convoy Yoren doused the wound with rubbing alcohol because that’s all they had to disinfect it with. It was the worst pain she’d ever felt in her life up to that point. He bandaged her up. He cut her hair so it wasn’t so long, couldn’t be grabbed as easily again. A day or two passed before word spread around that it was a contagion, could be passed through saliva, and you’d turn into a wight yourself shortly after being bitten. Yoren understood the implications of this before she did.

She’d been bitten by a wight. She should have turned into a wight. She wasn’t a wight. The bite wasn’t festering. It was just a bite. It scabbed up and was a bit pinkish. That was it. That’s when he made the decision that he wasn’t just going to drop her off in Winterfell. He was going to take her to the Wall. She didn’t argue. Jon was at the wall. She wanted Jon.

She was still trying to figure out  _ reaching _ . She didn’t tell Yoren about it. Too many urban legends as a kid about the Watch experimenting on people. She could  _ reach _ out and touch people. Sometimes if she dug into them a little she could feel what they felt, see what they saw. Sometimes she got impressions of their emotions. Sometimes if she concentrated she could hear their thoughts. Wights were real and they weren't human. Maybe she wasn't human either. So she didn't tell him.

She would have, eventually. When she knew she could trust him. But she wanted to know why he’d suddenly changed his mind about where to take her. She  _ reached _ and touched Yoren.

_ She’s immune. Fuck, she’s immune. Gotta get her to the Watch. Something in the blood? Keep her alive! _

It ended up not mattering. Yoren died within the week. She met  _ him _ . She stuck with him, and never left.

The second time she was bitten he was there and he saw it. It was a couple years after the outbreak. He’d been trying to hotwire a car so they could switch. The one they'd been driving had an oil leak. Hotwiring is never as easy as the movies used to make it look. It took time. She was keeping watch. It could have been worse. They were on the highway in the middle of nowhere, not in a city. This was after the incident with the Freys. He knew about  _ reaching _ . She’d had to  _ reach _ twice already that day and was trying to avoid doing it a third time. After she wore the wights that killed the Freys and had her seizure she’d get the shakes if she did it too much. That’s how the wights snuck up on her. They were fresher, smarter. Not half-rotted into stupidity yet. They moved quietly.

He had a Ruger then, not the Linebaugh. It had a nastier kickback. She shot the first one in the head. The Ruger cracked back from the force of the shot, popped her in the chin. She dropped the fucking gun. He came for her when he heard the shot. He didn’t have the machete yet either but they did have a fireman’s axe. Lost that somewhere along the way. The axe was too unwieldy to get a clean chop in the second wight’s neck. He got it between the shoulders instead. It went down, and once it hit the ground it grabbed her ankles and pulled her feet out from under her. It bit her calf. She kicked it in the teeth and backpedaled far enough that he could plant the head of the axe into the wight’s skull without threatening to hit her. Wouldn't matter if he had. He picked up the gun and pointed it at her anyway.

They’d been together for a while at this point. Long enough that even  _ he _ hesitated with the shot. He shouldn't have, but she was glad he did. Easy to shoot someone you didn’t care about. Harder to shoot someone you’ve cultivated survival in the apocalypse with. He’s never been sentimental but she’s always been useful. To his credit they weren’t fucking yet.

“I’m immune,” she gasped. “I’ve been bitten before and it didn’t do anything. I swear!” He didn’t shoot but he didn’t lower the gun either. He’d shot people who told them that before. She used to feel guilty about that. She used to wonder if those people were telling the truth. She was. “What will it hurt if you wait and see?” She shook her head, imploring. “I’ll let you shoot me if I start to turn. I  _ want _ you to shoot me if I start to turn.”

He decided that it didn’t hurt for him to wait and see. He had her get one of their towels, cut it into strips while he held her at gunpoint. Made her tie her ankles together. He put her face first on the ground, put his knee on her back while he tied her wrists behind her. She let him. She was positively  _ meek _ . He didn’t sleep that night. Neither of them did. He was too busy watching her, and she was too busy praying she wasn’t wrong. The next day passed. When her stomach started to growl his grip tightened on the gun. “I’m just hungry,” she told him tiredly. “Just regular ol’ hungry.” He dragged her over to a tree, one thin enough to wrap the towel strips around. He lashed her to the trunk, cinched her throat tight against it so she could barely move her head. Leaned back as far as he could away from her and fed her pieces of canned chicken from the end of his scaling knife. It was nerve wracking. If she so much as twitched, if he hands were anything less than absolutely steady, the sharp blade would cut her tongue in half. She couldn’t reach to bite him if she wanted to. She  _ did _ want to, but only because he was being incredibly annoying and not because she was turning into a wight.

When the next dawn broke she was still herself. Just tired and pissy and with a desperate need to take a shit. Her chin hurt from where the gun had smacked it. There was probably a bruise. He checked the bite. It was a little red but not swollen with infection. Normally when a wight bites someone the wound turns black with putrefaction within a few hours. The veins surrounding the bite swell, stick out from the skin grotesquely. The blood turns to sludge. Their eyes start to change color.

Hers was just a bite. Like some crazy had decided to have a taste.

He checked her eyes. Shined his flashlight into them. Testing the dilation, looking for traces of blue. He checked her pulse points, multiple ones. The carotid at her throat, temporal at her temple. Brachial at her elbow, radial at her wrist. Femoral at her groin. He stuck his hand down her pants for that one. His touch was clinical, never straying towards her genitals. His fingers still brushed through her pubic hair to find the artery. Her muscles jumped beneath her skin and he narrowed his eyes at her suspiciously. They weren’t fucking yet but that’s when she started getting ideas.

It took the rest of that day and another night for him to accept that it wasn't just a delayed reaction. That she wouldn't just turn more slowly than normal. The bite was scabbed over by then, barely pink at the edges. It itched like a catscratch. He untied her. "How?" he asked.

She shrugged. She didn't know. Said, "That's why Yoren was trying to get me to the Wall."

Life went on. It was just another way she was useful. They still shot on sight other scavs who had bite marks. He didn't show mercy and neither did she. No room for it. Couldn't take chances. She got bit a couple more times. Never on purpose. She just didn't have to be as careful about it as he did. She played bait a lot, was a distraction. He didn't like it but it was a usefulness she was willing to exploit and he didn't argue. The first few times he still watched her carefully afterwards. He never tied her up again, but he'd check her eyes and pulse points just like the first time. She didn't really understand the point of checking the pulse at multiple places but she didn't fight it. He stuck his hand down her pants a few more times. It was always very quick. He didn't linger. Didn't touch anywhere he didn't need to to find her femoral pulse. She still started to get ideas.

She'd never wanted to kiss someone before. She'd been barely more than a kid when the world had ended. She didn't get simpery or blushy or do any of those things that she remembered other girls doing at school when they had a crush on a boy. She just watched him sort of thoughtfully. She knew the mechanics of how sex worked. Any idiot kid with access to the internet did. She imagined how she thought that would go with him.

He was big. Bigger than her anyway. That wasn't saying much though, pretty much everyone was bigger than her. Muscley, but like a wiry sort of muscley. He had a nice face. He kept her safe and made sure she ate. She didn't know what his real name was but they trusted each other. If Yoren hadn't died and she'd had to choose between the two of them, she still would have gone with him. Nothing came of it, not for a while. He knew she watched him, and she knew he knew. He didn't really seem to care. Didn't welcome it, didn't dissuade it. Didn't sit her down and tell her it was inappropriate, didn't take advantage of it. They kept moving. Kept watching each other's backs. Life went on.

Eventually it came to a head. At a truck stop in the sticks of the Westerlands they stopped to top off their tank. They scouted, determined the place was empty. She went inside to hunt for supplies and he siphoned petrol from the abandoned cars littering the lot.

It was like the world's shittiest shopping trip. Soap, baby wipes, toilet paper. Toothpaste. He's always been a stickler about hygiene. Beef jerky. Some rope, thin nylon but better than nothing. Screwdrivers. She could file down a flathead and make it a shiv. Ibuprofen. Wonder of wonders but they had tampons. For being a dude he'd always been pretty blasé about her menstruation. The first time she'd asked her dad about puberty shit he'd stumbled over himself for several minutes before gruffly telling her to go talk to her mother about  _ lady stuff _ . While she was stuffing as many boxes of tampons as her pack could hold something on the shelf caught her eye. Held it. Condoms.

To that point her musings on the how's and when's and what's of their hypothetical sex had been just that. Musings. Daydreams when she was bored. One or two actual dreams while she was asleep. Vague wants fueled by the way his hands encased her waist when he had to boost her up, the way his lips tilted up into a smirk when she made a wry comment he found amusing, the way his eyes narrowed and his face smoothed itself void of expression when he aimed his gun. He neither encouraged the attention nor discouraged it. It was stupid. Potentially ruining their working relationship. She needed him for survival. But wasn't that what men wanted? Sex? Something wet and tight for them to stick their cocks in? What better way to cement herself to him as necessary? Useful  _ and _ willing to fuck.

Excuses. Dithering. She was embarrassed by her want and felt the need to justify it. He'd never needed justification from her before. That she wanted it should be enough for her. If he didn't that was his decision. If he rejected her it would be mortifying for a while but they needed each other. It wouldn't be the end of the world. They were already dealing with that. He'd be able to compartmentalize it. She should be able to as well. Life would go on. She grabbed the condoms.

It took a while longer before she worked up the courage. When she finally climbed into his lap one night after they'd secured the perimeter of their temporary safe house he didn't seem surprised. Not necessarily  _ eager _ but not surprised. She kissed him. She could tell it was unrefined, inexperienced. He didn't react much beyond steadying her with a hand on her hip. She was about to give up and write it off as a loss, slink away to lick her wounds. He whispered her name against her lips. "Lovely girl," he called her. Asked gently, "Are you sure?"

When she kissed him again, he stopped her. Took her chin in his hands. Tilted her head slightly. Showed her how to do it right.

He showed her a lot of stuff that night.

* * *

(They got a pump action hunting rifle for their efforts and a box and a half of ammo. It’s heavier than it looks and not as suited for close range as the Linebaugh but worth the risk. Before they head out she takes the folded paper with the child’s drawing from her back pocket, drops it onto the body of one of the wights. It belongs with them, whoever they were. They can’t help that they died. Not their fault. Nobody’s fault. Shit happens. Back outside the basement she familiarizes herself with the rifle while he siphons petrol. There’s hardly any left in the car for them to take. Evaporation. He limps when he moves. He's not stupid enough to deny assistance when she lets him lean on her. Pride has no place in survival.

They leave. His leg heals. Her bite does too. Life goes on. They have nowhere to be and can take as long as they want to get there.

They keep heading south, driving parallel to the Mander. They stay inland, avoid the rivers. People congregate on the rivers. They pass by Silverhill, Goldengrove. The sweltering forests of the Riverlands shifts into the gentle rolling piedmont of the Reach. They stop and scavenge when they can. The food lasts a while. At some point they change the tire. They avoid wights and other survivors. They don’t talk much except for the times they do. The sun rises. The sun sets. She’s not even sure how old she is at this point. Life isn’t easy but it’s better than being dead.

They have a rhythm, a routine. They wake up, they wipe themselves down to keep clean, they eat. He counts their calories. They start the car and go. They picked up an atlas somewhere along the way. One of those huge old books filled with paper maps of the whole continent that show a bunch of roads, not just the major highways. She sets it in her lap and plays navigator. They follow rusted road signs and change directions at a whim. After a few hours they stop and pull out the solar panel to charge the sat radio and their phone. The alarm goes off. He turns the radio on and clicks the microphone twice. Pip pip. No one answers. She used to ask him what the point was but she doesn’t anymore. He’s allowed his eccentricities. They get back in the car and keep moving. Eventually they stop and find a safe spot to sleep. Sometimes they can't find somewhere safe. Sometimes they have to kill some wights first. The next morning they wake up and do it all over again. Where they’re going doesn’t matter but they never stay in one place for long. Tourists on a road trip at the end of the world.

She never had lofty goals or aspirations for her life. Never had a plan for what she’d do when she grew up. Probably for the best considering what happened. She didn’t have dreams to give up when the infection hit. She was still so young when it happened. She’s basically grown up in the apocalypse. The life she lives now with him is the best that she could imagine for herself given the circumstances. Safety and reliability with someone she trusts.

Sometimes they fuck and sometimes they don’t. They don’t have to do it constantly. They can go days without sharing so much as a kiss. She doesn’t mind. Necessity demands they live in each other’s pockets. She’s useful. She never feels  _ unwanted _ .

She might love him, she thinks. She’s not sure. Doesn’t have much basis for comparison. She’s only ever loved family before him. She relies on him, certainly. He’s the only constant she’s had since her dad died. If she had to choose anyone she’d choose him. Maybe Jon… but no, she wishes Jon were still alive but she doesn’t think she’d have done well at the Wall. Maybe she’s selfish for that. But they work well together. She likes to think that, anyway. She likes to think that he wouldn’t have this easy chemistry with anyone else. She doesn't think she would.

Maybe that’s what love is. Maybe it’s safety and reliability. Maybe it’s trust. Maybe it’s being able to share a car with someone on a daily basis for years without strangling them. Maybe it’s not eating the pecans because you know they like them. Maybe it’s existing in their space silently without requiring their attention to be happy. Maybe it’s the soft kisses. The hard fucks. The way they hold you and you know that they’d do everything in their power to keep you safe. The way you hold them and know you’d do the same. Maybe that’s what love is. Maybe that’s love.

She doesn’t know. She’s not sure. Stupid girl.

The road keeps going. The sun keeps rising. They have nowhere to be and can take as long as they want to get there. She’s got time to figure it out.)


	2. Chapter 2

They get caught in a torrential rainstorm an hour east of Ashford. It’s coming down too hard for them to keep driving. The Reach is filled with rolling hills and there are overpasses every few miles on the highway so they go a bit further, creeping at a snail's pace through the downpour, until they find one. They have to kill the handful of wights hiding there. Wights don’t like the rain in a similar way to how they don’t like the heat. They get soggy, skin too loose and soft and bodies too bloated with water. Sometimes when it rains too hard their rotting flesh just peels off under the pressure. They go to ground when the summer storms roll through. That’s why it was so easy for them to decimate the North, why nobody travels further than the Neck anymore. They thrive in the cold and the snow that preserves their bodies. Her homeland has been dead for a long time.

It’s easy to get rid of the ones beneath the overpass. The storm came suddenly and in the middle of the day when the wights were already sluggish from the sun. She has the Linebaugh and he has the shotgun. She tucks against his back, uses him to steady her from the recoil when she shoots. Keeps out of the way of the spray of buckshot from the shotgun. Easy. Simple. Over in half a minute. When it’s done they take an early lunch and sit on the hood of the car and split a can of diced pineapples. The world is grey and humid and they watch the rain fall, dry beneath the bridge. Occasionally beams of sunlight break through the clouds and paint the steam rising from the asphalt of the road a soft pastel yellow. Heat storms like this are quick to come and quick to go. They’ll be on the road again in an hour.

One of the wights had gotten closer than she’d have liked before she shot it. There’s black brackish blood and brain matter splattered across the sleeve of her left arm. They’ve gotten so used to the squalor of combat that she had dismissed it at the time. She pops a slice of pineapple into her mouth and considers herself now. Sweet juice from the fruit drips from her chin as she chews and says, “I’m disgusting.”

He’s leaning back in a lounge against the car. His arms are crossed behind his head, torso propped up at an angle against the front windshield. He’s watching the rain with a drowsy expression until he turns his eyes to her instead. They sweep up and down her form thoughtfully. Linger for a brief moment on her lips. He gives her a vague hum.

She is disgusting. She’s thin and scrawny. It’s difficult to keep enough weight on that her ribs aren’t visible. Her hair is tangled and stringy, tacky with oil. She smells like sweat and wight-rot. There’s grit beneath her fingernails. Her skin is still Northern pale. It shows all the grime and dirt she’s accumulated since the last time they’d bathed in the Mander a week or so ago. She wishes she weren’t so pale. Vanity has no place in their life because it doesn’t facilitate survival but she can still quietly grouse to herself.

She doesn’t tan, she just burns. He freckles in the sun. She is inordinately jealous of that.

She wants suddenly and with near desperation to be clean. She hops off the hood of the car and waves away his attention when he leans forward in question as if to follow. The trunk is filled with boxes and packs, the collection of things they've scavenged. Tools like hammers and screwdrivers and a crowbar. Duct tape. Their clothes. A tarp. Several roadside kits they'd looted from other cars. Their food. A pack filled solely with things to trade the next time they pass by a survivor outpost. The supplies they use to clean the guns. He maintains them religiously. Useless if wight gunk gets into the mechanisms and jams them up. A veritable treasure trove of supplies that they jealously guard. Switching from one car to the next is always done as quickly and quietly as possible. They've had to run off other scavengers thinking to take advantage, and they've been run off before themselves. Starting over from scratch is nigh impossible but they've managed when they had to.

She pulls out their pack filled with toiletries. Grabs a couple of towels and a bar of soap. Unscented. Everything is unscented. The fresher wights that still have enough function for olfaction can smell anything perfumed. Sometimes they're smart enough to hunt by smell. They forgo shampoo and conditioner in favor of just using the soap everywhere. Saves space in the packs and they care more about being clean than having healthy-looking hair.

She  _ reaches _ . Pushes out, further than she usually does. Skims the world without touching anything. He's close and warm and ginger and cloves and a liar. She  _ reaches _ beyond. Bugs in the grass to the side of the road. Birds huddled in the struts of the overpass waiting for the storm to pass and shaking water from their feathers. A snake curled in its den. Awareness is broad, life at her fingertips. Even the grass and plants she feels, the little copse of trees on the other side of the hill. The resiliency of nature. Nothing around close enough to be a threat.

She unbuttons her flannel overshirt. Shrugs off the tank top underneath. Still connected to the world, still  _ reaching _ , she feels him in her bones as he shifts with attention. She unbuttons her pants, braces herself against the car to peel them from her legs. Reaches behind herself to unclip her bra and shakes out of it. Drops her panties. When she turns to look at him over her shoulder he's rolled to watch her. When their eyes meet he smirks. Makes a  _ go on _ gesture with his hand. She rolls her eyes and pretends she's not smiling.

Stepping out from beneath the overpass and into the pouring rain startles an involuntary gasp from her. It's not freezing but it is colder than she'd expected given how humid it was under the bridge. The rain pelts against her skin and she laughs in surprise at the sting. The asphalt of the road is warm beneath her feet, cooled from the burning temperature it was earlier by the rain. Tepid summer rainwater sluices through her hair, over her face and neck, drips from the tips of her breasts, into her public hair and down her legs. She feels scoured clean by the force of the rain alone but she still takes the soap and scrubs. It's difficult to work up a lather before the rain rinses it away but she gets the important areas clean. Hair, face, armpits, groin, ass. She rubs her arms briskly until the caked dirt and blood washes away.

When she's done washing she stands there for a minute longer. She's gotten used to the chill. Stepping back under the overpass and into the warmth wafting off the asphalt will be bliss. She closes her eyes.  _ Reaches _ . Finds him. Touches, just lightly. He'll know she's there inside him. He always does. Looking at herself through his eyes is an experience. Naked, hair dark and trailing down her shoulders, breasts pert and nipples hard. With steam curling around her and with the hazy filter of rain, the world a backdrop of grey behind her, she looks ethereal. Otherworldly. Like one of the sea creatures ancient Braavosi used to claim would seduce men from their ships and into the ocean to drown. He lets her feel his arousal.

She wonders what it would be like to  _ reach _ out and slip into his skin while he fucks her. Could she feel it on both sides? Feeling his cock inside her and feeling her cunt around him at the same time? Something to consider.

She pulls back into herself. She feels clean for the first time in a while. Real clean, true clean. Not disgusting anymore. Her skin is red as if welted from the force of the downpour. He's off the car now, waiting for her when she comes back under the bridge. He hands her a towel. Uses a second one to soak the rainwater from her hair while she runs the first over her body. She shivers, laughing at the chill, laughing when he kisses her. When his hand cups one of her breasts and squeezes gently at a nipple, she laughs harder and pushes him away. "I'm clean now," she reminds him. "You're not. Your turn to wash, if you want to have a go." He leans against her hand on his chest to kiss her again. His tongue touches her lips. She lets him in with a soft noise before pushing once more. He growls against her mouth and she pulls back and away and then shakes herself forcefully like a dog. Water flies from her hair, spinning droplets in all directions. Given their proximity he catches most of it. The look he gives her is offended and she smiles. It'd encourage him too much to kiss him again even though she wants to. She hands him the soap with a raised eyebrow and then saunters back over to the car.

He strips. Perfunctory. Like he’s in a hurry to do it. She laughs again to herself quietly when she hears him let out a yelp at the drop in temperature between the humid warmth under the bridge and the wet coolness of the rain.

She towels off. When the fabric is soaked she drops it to let herself air dry. No point in putting on clothes if the heat in his eyes is any indication.  _ Reaches _ again just to make sure they're still alone. They are. They haven't been followed by other scavs in a long while. Not since losing the last group of bandits near Bitterbridge. Wights are unlikely to be roaming in a storm like this. Never hurts to be careful. They have the guns close just in case. Naked, hair dripping. She collects their dirty clothes and shoves them into a plastic garbage bag to wash next time they find a safe place to hang them out to dry. Stops to watch him briefly as he cleans himself. Warmth pools between her legs, a frisson of heat in her cunt. Years they’ve been together. Years they’ve traveled side by side. Fighting and fucking and surviving. Years. She doesn’t think she’ll ever get tired of him.

In the backseat of the car she goes through their suitcase full of clothes. They try to keep several sets of everything clean at once but sometimes that’s difficult. Jackets tear. Pants rip. Things become thin and threadbare. A shirt worn today may get shredded to become bandages tomorrow. Picking out an outfit involves more consideration to how crusty with dried sweat it is and less about what it looks like. If they were in a more defensible position or if the storm was going to last all night they might wash what they can in the rain and lay it over the car to dry. But the storm will pass soon, summer showers always do in the Reach. Whatever wights are laying low in the area will come out in earnest once it stops. The overpass is too open. They’ll have to leave as soon as the downpour slows.

She lays out clothes for the both of them. Once they’re dry and the rain passes they’ll want to get dressed quickly and get back on the road. She pulls out some fresh jeans for him. Clean, mostly. Only slightly torn at the knee. A bit too tall for him, they’d had to hem the cuffs. A buzzing noise. She pauses. Narrows her eyes. It takes some time and some shoving things around before she finds their phone vibrating at the floorboard. They were supposed to get out the solar panel and charge it but it’s been grey and overcast all day, a portent of the storm that had finally broken over them. The battery is at half-percent. The alert that flashes on the screen is the same one that always flashes when the alarm goes off.  _ Radio. _

She looks through the windshield. He’s standing in the rain. His eyes are closed, head tilted up towards the sky. Water plasters his hair to his neck, his shoulders. Makes it look dark like her own instead of the red-auburn it truly is. The shock of white that cuts through the ginger stands out even more vividly than usual. A brief break in the clouds bathes him in sunlight. His skin seems golden in the glow except for where it is scarred and there it is milky white. If she is a siren tempting men to throw themselves into the ocean then he is a god made flesh. She swallows. She digs through his pack until she finds the sat radio. Turns it on. There’s the soft crackling noise of a dead line. She’s intimately familiar with the sound. She’s heard it every day for years.

It would be easy to change the frequency. He wouldn’t know, she could change it back before he came in from the rain. She’s curious. She could assuage that curiosity. She doesn’t change the frequency. She’s useful. She’s good. He can trust her. He’ll keep her if she’s useful, if he can trust her. She clicks the microphone twice the same way she’s seen him do hundreds of times. Pip pip. Nobody answers. Nobody ever does.

He comes back while she’s waiting to click it again. He always waits a few minutes to try again before giving up so she does too. She’s sitting naked in the passenger seat with the door open, feet on the dashboard. When he stops outside the open door she hands him a towel. He’d forgotten to get one himself before going into the rain. When he notices the radio in her lap he pauses in patting himself down. She looks up at him. His face is blank. Expression carefully neutral. She can’t read anything from it which means there’d be something to read if he weren’t hiding it. She should probably care but she doesn’t. She’s basically figured out that he was some sort of killer before the apocalypse. Military, hitman, mercenary. Hell maybe just a regular old serial killer who did it for fun. Doesn’t matter anymore. Same as how it doesn’t matter that they’re fucking, even if she knows it's kind of wrong. She doesn’t care and anyone else who would is dead. He can trust her. She trusts him. Besides, she's a killer too.

“Didn’t want to interrupt,” she explains with a shrug. Shakes the radio at him lightly. “No one answered.” She maintains eye contact and clicks the microphone again. Pip pip. Something in his face softens. Gentles. Darkens too, but in a familiar way. She bites her lip.

He kneels down inside the open door. His hair drips water onto her thigh. He kisses the drops away. She shivers. Drops her feet from the dashboard and turns in her seat to face him. He spreads her legs with his hands, settles between them. Leans back for a brief moment to arrange the damp towel on the ground beneath him, a buffer between his knees and the rough asphalt. When he wraps an arm around her ass and tugs her forward her thighs go over his shoulders. The first touch of his tongue to her clit has her squeaking. Lightning travels from her cunt up through her spine. Her hold on the radio is loose and tremulous. Nobody answers the second clicks either. The soft staticky sound fades into the background in favor of her whimpered noises of pleasure as he licks into her.

The radio falls from her fingers. He's prepared and catches it before it hits the ground. He lifts his face, ignores her dismayed whine. Sets his chin on the soft sensitive skin below her navel. His stubble prickles her. He clicks his tongue,  _ tsk tsk _ , and wags the radio at her admonishingly. She grimaces. The sat radio has been with them since the beginning and they’re not sure how much longer it’ll last. Probably wouldn’t survive being dropped on the ground because her body turned to jelly beneath his mouth. He turns the radio off. The quiet crackling static goes silent and he sets it gently back onto the floor board. Then he hauls her closer, her ass sliding against the fabric of the seat. He lowers his face back to where she’s slick and empty, wet and wanting for his attention.

When she threads her hands in his hair it squeezes water from the strands. It trickles between her fingers, runs like a river across her knuckles and wrists. He smells clean from the soap and his shoulders are cool from the rain, cause goosebumps to rise on her thighs and legs. He keeps his eyes open and on her. Half-lidded, languid. His licks are long and slow like he’s got all the time in the world. Thunder rumbles overhead in the distance. She hopes the storm holds a little longer. Apparently he’s in a teasing mood. Her thighs over his shoulders, he hooks an arm around her hip to bring his thumb to her. He pulls at the skin above her clit until it lifts, becomes more exposed, and then kisses the little bundle of nerves. Sucks it lightly. She gasps and rocks into his mouth. The armrest between the passenger and driver’s seat digs into her lower back but if she sits up then they’ll lose the angle. The pinch in her spine is worth it.

He keeps his thumb on her clit, rolls it gently across the calloused pad. She feels the whirls as friction and her hips buck up without her telling them to. She feels him smirk against her wet folds, feels every puff of breath as he exhales. She's so empty and hot inside. Her muscles clench achingly and she rocks her face closer. He pulls his hand away and shushes her growling at the loss, replaces his thumb with his mouth as he strokes against her with broad swipes of the flat of his tongue. He uncurls his arm from around her hip and lowers it to under and then between her legs. His middle finger sinks into her cunt straight to the knuckle and she gasps. He doesn't give her much time to adjust. It pistons inside her, fast and hard, at odds and off-time with his lips and tongue. The dichotomy of the two is ecstacy. The rough fingerfucking and the slow teasing of his mouth leaves her panting. She can feel herself get even wetter. The noise of his knuckles hitting the lips of her vagina becomes louder as the movement becomes more moist.

He kisses her clit again. Lifts his head. Sets his chin on her thigh. It smears the fluid from her vagina across her skin. He watches his finger disappear inside her, reappear. Disappear again. He licks his lips and looks back up at her face. His expression is indulgent. When he speaks his voice is a low rumble and she feels the vibrations of his throat against her thigh. “A girl should touch herself,” he murmurs. It is phrased as a suggestion but sounds like a command.

“Where?” she gasps. He adds a second finger. In instinctive response her thighs try to press together, to hold his hand against her. He tilts his head and nips at her skin lightly. A warning. It takes considerable effort for her to relax again beneath the onslaught of pleasure.

He hums as if in consideration. “Her breasts,” he decides after a moment. She leans back, braces one hand in the driver’s seat behind her and puts some of her weight on it to decrease the pressure in her lower back from the armrest between the seats. The other hand she uses to pinch one of her nipples. It’s hard and she rolls it between her fingers. "Good," he tells her. "Good." Despite the praise he removes his fingers from her, sets the sticky digits against her other thigh. She keens in dismay and squeezes her tit within her palm. "Now she touches her cunt." She does. She shoves three fingers in, the width of them stretching her just slightly further than his two had. Her hips roll and her head tips back with another gasp. His face is so close to her that his breath feels cool against her knuckles as they move, moist with the juices of her sex. "Good," he says again in a purr. He's watching her the way a snake watches a mouse before it strikes. "And then she takes her wet fingers and touches her breast again."

She hesitates. Her fingers still move within her. She doesn't want to take them out. She likes feeling full of herself, full of him. He smiles. It's sharp with unkind promise. "Lovely girl," he warns. She glares at him. Gods she loves and hates when he teases but they don't have  _ time _ . Summer storms never last that long. He raises an eyebrow. Her questing fingers find that place inside her that puts fire in her pulse and she gasps in surprise, rubs against it harder. He sighs as if disappointed.

When he pulls away she backtracks, “No no no,” and when she pulls them out her fingers glisten. A string of fluid stretches between them and her twat before breaking and her internal muscles squeeze desperately around nothing. “She does,” she tells him, “she listens.” Pinching her nipple again is slick, slippery. It pebbles harder and looks glossy with viscous wetness. Too late. Stupid girl. He’s lost interest. Instead he sits back, reclines on the ground. He takes himself in his fist and strokes.

“A girl stops touching herself now,” he says mildly. She obeys even though it nearly pains her. He uses the hand he’d used on her to touch himself. She knows from experience that it’s not wet enough for him to jerk himself off comfortably. He knows it too. His thumb plays with the weeping slit at the head of his cock, coaxes precome to flow. “She watches. If she keeps her hands off, a man  _ might _ let her find pleasure when he’s finished. If she touches again then she surely won’t.”

Fuck. Fuck. “Okay.” She sits upright, feels her back crack slightly. She fists her hands to keep away the temptation to use them. Each breath makes her sensitive tits rise, her nipples strain. The one coated in her juice is cool with the moisture. Sweat beads on her forehead, her neck. Every slight movement of her body causes her thighs to rub very gently together, causes pangs of heat to flare in her cunt. She watches.

He’s watching her too, making sure she’s doing what he told her to. Gods she hates when he teases. Except she doesn’t. It’s usually worth it in the end. She bites her lip, watches the movement of his hand, his wrist. He’s jerking himself slow, unhurried. The same pace he’d used for his mouth against her clit. He’s fully erect. A vein runs from the base up to the head and she’d give up anything in the world to feel it on her tongue. “If a girl had been patient,” he starts, and  _ oh _ he’s going to  _ talk _ while he does it. He really is punishing her, “a man would have put his fingers inside her again. He would have made them wet, would have her dripping around his hand.” She moans, rubs her thighs together. Her fists clench harder. Because he’s watching he sees it and smirks. “And when he thought they were slick enough he would have put them to work even lower.”

Deplorable man. Depraved. Her ass tightens, her cunt clenches with want. She didn’t know a lot about sex before the infection hit but even at her young age she knew anal was something only tremendous perverts did. Of course it wasn’t long after they’d started fucking that she’d realized they were both apparently tremendous perverts. It feels  _ good _ when he opens her up, when he puts his tongue against the tight pucker of muscle. When he has to shove and force his way inside. It’s raw, animal, so much more intense than even the most bruising fuck he’d give her twat. They don’t do it often. He’s too much of a clean freak. He probably wouldn’t have actually fucked her ass even if she’d done everything he’d told her too. But the possibility of it happening and then losing that possibility with her own actions is certainly effective as a teasing punishment.

His hips shift but his grip is still loose, speed still lazy. He’ll drag it out. Maybe if she’s good he’ll let her lick it up when he comes. She bites her lip. Her own hips press downwards, rub her cunt against the fabric of the seat. It’s technically still obeying. She’s not touching herself. There’s no way this little stimulation, this tiny frottage, will be enough to get her off. His gaze is dark. Knowing. He raises an eyebrow. It’s semantics. Doesn’t matter if she’s not touching herself. He doesn’t want her to move. She whines but stops. He continues. “A girl is clean. Perhaps this man would have forgone the condom--” Liar, liar, he’s a  _ liar _ he never sticks his cock up her ass without wrapping it first, too dirty, can’t get her clean enough on the inside for his tastes. But the thought. “--so that when he finished he could leave a mess.” The  _ thought _ . He doesn’t come inside her anymore, not on purpose. Sometimes on accident. She misses feeling it dripping from her, the sensation of it seeping from her holes. If he didn’t wear a condom he could come in her ass without it being risky.

He likes leaving marks on her but she likes feeling it. They are a push and pull of  _ yours yours yours _ ,  _ mine mine mine _ . Ownership, partnership, companions. He does nothing to her she is not willing and eager to let be done. Even this punishment is play. She’ll get hers eventually and he’ll make sure the wait is worth it.

He stops talking. Her eyes are weighty, demanding. He likes to watch and he likes to be watched. He likes that she’s hungry for it. He likes that she’s dangerous, that she’s clever, that she’s a girl people underestimate to their detriment, and he likes how she still gets wet and wanton for him, likes that she trusts him enough to come to him for comfort. She likes it too. He’s never told her this stuff. She just knows. Not from  _ reaching _ , but from experience. Extrapolation. He fucks her hard after she’s killed someone. He fucks her soft when she’s upset. Her mouth waters. She can almost taste the bitter salt of his seed. He twists his wrist at the head, speeds up. He’s getting closer and all it took was her undivided attention. What a peacock.

The hand not jerking himself off dips down. Fondles his balls for a moment. Goes further. He comes with a groan, cock twitching, hips rocking, when his fingers skate across the tight skin of his own asshole. She groans too. Gods what a picture. He milks himself in short hard strokes. Come burbles up between his fingers, drips down the side of his length and onto his thighs. His chest heaves. His hair is still dark with rainwater and now sweat too. What was her thought earlier? A god made flesh. He catches his breath, reclines where he sits. The towel under him has bunched up from the movement of his hips. Her muscles vibrate between her skin in anticipation. When he finally looks up at her again his gaze is considering. Judgement. She licks her lips, shifts in place. He tilts his head down at his groin in invitation. She moves.

His taste is familiar, almost sour against her tongue. It’s not so much the flavor she enjoys as the act of it, the debauchery. Probably a good thing her parents are dead. They’d be horrified by the person she’s become. Killer, slut. At least she's monogamous. Points in her favor there, Ma. She sucks his cockhead, cleans it. Runs her open mouth down his softening length. Licks his thighs, his balls. He runs his clean hand through her hair while she works. Murmurs praise. “A good girl,” he says softly. “She listened this time. Very good, very good lovely girl.” When she’s finished with his genitals she grabs the hand he’d jerked himself with, licks between his fingers. Takes them in her mouth, lets them go with a wet  _ pop _ . He pulls her close, kisses her hard. Her name comes out in a growl from his mouth into hers. His tongue against her own, his lips.  _ Mine _ , he says without words. He’s not sentimental but he is possessive. She agrees with him. She bites him lightly, retribution for his teasing.  _ Mine _ , she reminds him with her teeth. She’s possessive too.

She makes to lay back, the rough asphalt be damned. She can deal with road rash. But he stills. Doesn’t let her pull him on top of her. His head tilts, eyes narrow. Assessing. She frowns and listens. Cicadas screaming. A bird chirps. No rain. The storm has passed. How long ago? They got too caught up in the game. Like a couple of idiots.

She  _ reaches _ . The hills of the Reach are mostly empty but wights will hide in the wooded knolls. They’re usually rotted and stupid with age but they still wander. They smell blood better than anything but sex gets the blood moving and has its own smell. There are some sniffing the air when she  _ reaches _ them. Not close but not far either. “Fuck,” she hisses. Stupid, stupid. Rolls to her feet and grabs the bag with their dirty clothes. The towels on the ground.

He rises. They help each other dress quickly. She hisses again when her clean dry panties brush against the swollen sensitive flesh of her cunt as she pulls them on. His expression when she glares at him is pentenent. “Oops,” he says. They pile back into the car, start the engine. The inside smells like warm wet grass, warm wet asphalt, warm wet sex. She breathes through her mouth and tastes it in the air. Not sure if it’s a product of  _ reaching _ , which sometimes gives her senses phantom scents or flavors, or if she was just that aroused. They pull out from beneath the overpass and within a minute see a wight shuffling down the side of the road towards the bridge they’d just left behind. It turns to chase them, rotted mouth yawning open in a snarl. It can’t keep up with the car.

Neither of them talk. She tries not to feel irritated by the turn of events and mostly fails. After a few minutes he takes her hand in his. Brings it to his mouth and kisses her fingers. There's a promise in that kiss. She subsides.

That night when they've found a place off the highway to park he takes her in the backseat, fucks her hard and slow and long. He reaches inside her deep enough to have her muscles tensing, her toes flexing. He kisses her stomach. Her breasts. Her neck. Her face. His mouth is gentle and soft. A contrast to the overwhelming press of his cock against her cervix. He doesn't so much thrust as he does grind, their hips barely parting with the movement. When his lips meet hers she holds his face in her hands. He touches their foreheads together. A god made flesh she'd thought, but he is the one whose stare is worship, he is the one who whispers her name like it is a prayer. She's projecting. She's too small and too skinny and too horsey for anyone to think of her like that. Even him.

She loves him. She does. It comes to her like an afterthought. A realization she'd had a long time ago and just now remembered. His eyes meeting hers, their mouths so close as to share air. She almost tells him but she doesn't. She's useful and she lets him fuck her. He's not sentimental. What would her heart give him that her body doesn't? That  _ reaching _ can't? She doesn't tell him. Wouldn't get her anywhere. Nothing to gain from it. Stupid girl.

When she peaks it feels like the orgasm is in her entire body and not just centered at her vagina. It takes her intensely, lasts longer than usual. Leaves her gasping and shaking. Her muscles tremble, her thighs quake. He chuckles softly and keeps moving within her. She tries to maintain eye contact but gives up to toss her head back, to moan. He kisses her throat where it vibrates with the sound. His own orgasm comes soon after and without much fanfare. He spills against her thighs with a quiet grunt.

How long has she loved him? A month? A year? Since they'd started having sex? Before that?

One of them needs to keep watch. It's her turn to go first tonight but she can barely hold her eyes open. He sits up with a muffled snort of amusement and pulls her against him. She dozes in his lap. Tucks her head beneath his chin. His hands trail aimlessly from her thighs to her hips to her arms. It's stupid. They should be doing better. Wights don't care how comfortable they are, other scavs won't care if they keep to themselves. Vigilance is necessary for survival. This isn't a movie or a story or a song. The world doesn't stop being shitty just because she wants a post-fuck cuddle.

"Ah, lovely girl," he murmurs. When she hums in question, drowsy, he shushes her gently. His hold on her tightens. "My sweet lovely girl." She sleeps.

He's distant again in the morning, tired from letting her sleep. The affection that takes him in spells has run its course by dawn. They don’t talk through their morning routine. They don’t touch beyond the accidental brushes that people in the same car occasionally share. That’s just how they are. When it burns the fire between them burns hot, and burns out quickly. It’s fine. The scorching desire may have passed from him but there is always warmth between them. She’s used to it. She's glad she didn't say anything about love last night.

They lucked out. No wights came for them in the night. She drives so he can nap. She thinks. What comes of her loving him? What future do they have? Even when she was little she didn't care about the concept of marriage. Of happily ever after. None of that was ever for her. The world is over. Society is dead. Home and family is a possibility null and void. Even if she were the sort of person to want children, even if he were the sort of person to want to be a father, that would be the most irresponsible decision for either of them to make. Nothing will ever be able to approach normal for them. They could never have a house that they could keep. They can never have a home. Home is him. Home is whatever car they’re in. Home is the road. This life they have together now is the only one they could ever share.

This is enough for her. This has to be enough for her. Her and him and survival and the road.

He’s asleep so he can’t hold the atlas for her. That’s alright. She picks a direction at random and drives. The road stretches on, the highway to the horizon. They don't have anywhere to go, nowhere to be. Destinations don’t matter anymore. What matters is that they get there together.

* * *

He doesn’t like to interact with other scavengers, other survivors at the occasional outpost they pass. He gets weirdly defensive about it. He'll do it, but he doesn't like it. She used to think it was a holdover from whatever culture he came from. Some place across the Narrow Sea. She’s kind of gathered that the Lorathi have some sort of intimacy issue, don’t like to talk to strangers. Insular. She thought it was that. After so long together she’s realized that he’s just sort of a dick.

Their stays in what passes for civilization these days are short. They get in. They trade. They get out. Mostly they trade for weapons. Petrol, if the other scavs have some to spare. He always makes her stay behind while he vets the place, makes sure the people there are friendly. Then he’ll come get her when he’s sure it’s safe. It’d be easier if she  _ reached _ and felt intentions, but he felt her  _ reaching _ when they first met. Somebody else could too, maybe. He doesn’t like to risk it so they don’t. He’s not sentimental but he’s possessive. She’s useful. Probably doesn’t want to deal with the potential trouble if someone decides to try and steal her away. He doesn’t like her talking to people. That’s when the possessiveness gets irritating. But more than that it’s survival. She’s young and he’s not. He knows how to read people better than she does.

Besides, even disregarding  _ reaching _ , she’s a girl. She’s small and she’s young and she’s not beautiful but she’s not ugly either. For some men that’s enough. People were shitty about that before the world ended. Good that she got with him. He at least made sure for fact that she wanted to fuck him before he put his cock in her. So she keeps close and doesn’t talk to people. It’s stupid and shitty that that’s how the world works. But it is what it is.

She used to ask for news. She never gets any she wants. The important stuff never changes. No cure. Lannisters still in King’s Landing. Freys still in Riverrun. People want to trade for news and they don’t have enough for trade to spare to get the same information over and over. Last major thing she heard was a year or so ago. There was supposedly an Essosi scientist, some Targaryen, who came with a supply airdrop. Said she was trying to get samples for a cure or something. Dumb bitch. Probably dead now. Even if she’s not they’ll never let her back into Essos.

She stopped asking about the North a while ago because she kept getting the same answer. Wights and snow. No point. It’s dead. Move on.

They stick close together when they do interact with other people. Meeting scavs on the road is when things get really tense. Never know what their intentions are. Could be they’re just nice people that want to shoot the shit, see if they’ve got some food to trade for clothes or batteries. Could be they’re raiders trying to lull them into security before bringing out the auto rifles. These days they run into the latter more than they do they former. All the nice people are dead. That’s what you get for trusting. Every man for themselves. Except for the two of them. They trust each other and no one else. She learned that the hard way.

Sometimes they come up on a community and get run off before they can even stop the car. Sometimes they find one a day or two too late and it’s on fire or infested with wights. Usually they go weeks and weeks and weeks without finding an occupied outpost. Most of the survivors that are left that aren’t in King’s Landing or Riverrun or Highgarden are scavs like them in cars roaming the countryside. Population isn’t refreshing. People dying faster than they can breed. She hasn’t seen a baby in a year or two. No kids under ten. Most of the young ones died when the infection hit, the rest died in the years since. Infants don’t usually live long. Too loud, too needy. Draw too much attention. Wights get them, or other survivors do to shut them up. The youngest people she sees are about her age. Most of the old people are dead too. In a decade everyone will be dead, probably.

Everyone but them. She doesn’t plan on dying anytime soon. She won’t let him, either. She needs him. He’s home. It’ll be easier when everyone else is gone though. Then they’ll only have to worry about the wights. Wights are a lot more predictable. All they care about is eating. People  _ want _ things.

They meet some interesting survivors over the years. A man with a burn across his face who they traded bullets with. He let her try some of his whiskey when she asked and laughed meanly when she coughed it back up. A huge woman with a one-handed man who claimed he was bitten but survived when they cut the hand off before the infection could spread. A group of raiders calling themselves the Brotherhood. They tried to get her to leave him but she wouldn’t. The leader was an old ginger with an eyepatch who seemed concerned for her. Told her she wasn’t in good company. Saw something in the man she was with that he didn’t like. She told him to fuck off. She was happy where she was.

Nobody they run into interesting enough to tempt them away from each other. Nobody interesting enough to invite into their partnership. They stick together. Just the two of them.

There are things they don’t talk about when they’re with other people. They don’t talk about  _ reaching _ . Her being immune. That they fuck. People probably already assume they’re fucking but they still don’t talk about it. Sometimes when they stop at outposts she sees women with eyes as dead as the wights, women who trade their bodies for safety because that’s all they have to trade. She doesn’t blame them. Survival. They look at her with sympathy. She  _ reached _ out and touched one once, just to see.  _ Poor girl _ , the woman had thought,  _ poor girl she’s so young. I hope he’s at least gentle about it. _ She doesn’t know how to explain that he’s not but she likes it, so she doesn’t explain at all. He keeps her even closer in those places. The men look at her too. She doesn’t  _ reach _ for them. She doesn’t want to know what they’re thinking.

They parlay when they can. They kill when they have to. She’s gotten used to killing people. She used to pretend she was him or pretend they were wights and it was easier that way. She gets it, after a while. Why people are just buckets of meat and blood to him. Now she doesn’t have to pretend. It’s almost easier when they get in a firefight. She doesn’t feel bad about killing people that attack them and afterwards they get to loot the dead people’s stuff. It’s like trading but they get to keep everything.

She got shot, once. A little less than two years ago. They were just south of the Neck. Some assholes pretending to have news about the North. Said something about Winterfell being back on the radar when she asked. Come to our camp, they said, we’ve got a radio set up to talk to them. She knew better than to say they had their own radio. She could get the frequency from them and try herself later. He was suspicious and wanted to leave but she was eager so they went. She wanted so badly for it to be true. Just one thing, she’d thought. Just let me have this one thing. They knew she wanted to trust them. They did have a radio. But they had guns too.

They got her in the hip and it was the worst pain in the entire world. Worse than being bitten. She bled a fuckton. There were just a couple of them and he was furious so killing them was easy. He did it like it was the easiest thing in the world. Breathing. Walking. Blinking. Killing. Cornerstones of existence. He dragged her back to the car. He’d tried to pick her up but she’d screamed. It just hurt so much. Didn’t he know how much it hurt? He cursed at her in Braavosi when he dug the bullet out with his fingers and his knife. She doesn’t know much Braavosi but she knows the swears. “Stupid girl,” he’d called her. “Stupid, stupid girl.” She thought she was going to die. She was just bleeding so much. He did too, she thinks. He didn’t tell her that he did. But she could see it in his eyes even without having to  _ reach _ to read him.

They stitched her up. Kept moving, before the people he’d killed came back as wights. He didn’t stop to headshot them after he killed them. Too preoccupied with getting her out. Stupid girl. Wasted several bottles of painkillers on her until it healed. Eventually the pain in her hip went away. After a while. A long while. Sometimes it aches if she sleeps on it wrong, if they fuck in certain positions. His insult still hurts now if she thinks about it too much, or too often. Pops in her head sometimes when she fucks up. Stupid girl. She has to stay useful. If she’s useful and she’s smart, he’ll keep her. He’s not sentimental. She needs him more than he needs her. Stay useful. Stupid girl. It hurts if she thinks about it. She thinks about it a lot.

Maybe that’s why she doesn’t tell him she loves him. Maybe he already knows. All the people in the world and they stay with each other. She’s useful and she loves him. Love doesn’t give him anything from her he doesn’t already have. A fuck and someone to keep watch. Love would just complicate it. Muddy the waters. Create expectations that neither of them can meet. Doesn’t make her any more important to keep around. Sometimes she gets annoyed when they meet with other scavs and he makes sure she stays close. Sometimes she’s glad. It’d be easy for him to ditch her. Just leave her behind. He's already done it once. Stay useful, be good. All the people in the world. He'll keep her, as long as she stays useful.

Stupid girl.

* * *

(She cuts his hair with a pair of kitchen shears and then he does hers. She keeps hers shorter than he does. He’s never had his hair grabbed by a wight before. She has and doesn’t want a repeat of the experience. Her hair looks more even than his because he’s got a better eye for it but if he notices then he doesn’t mention it. It wouldn’t matter anyway. They don’t have anyone but each other to impress. Nobody’s pretty these days. Afterwards he runs his fingers through her choppy hair with a smirk. Warmth in his eyes. He gives a little tug and calls her a lovely girl when she bites her lip.

They kill some wights to clear out a little house in the Stormlands, a couple hours off the coast. Shack up there for a few days. She’s on her period and everything hurts. Sometimes she wonders if that’ll be an issue down the line, the way her cramps occasionally feel like gunshots. Not like there’s a gyno around to talk to. Sometimes she’s worried about getting pregnant but they’re usually careful. Careful enough that she bleeds every month anyway. He could probably whip something up to get rid of it if it happened. In the Stormlands it rains a lot. Means the wights aren’t as active there as they are in the Reach or the Riverlands. Safest place is probably Dorne, because of the heat. Wights rot right down to bone beneath the sun. But the Boneway and the Prince’s Pass are both barricaded. Dornishmen shoot anyone who tries to come that far South on sight.

The rain hides them from wights but not other scavs. Lannisters prowl the Stormlands because it attracts survivors, smash and grab what they can to drag back to King’s Landing. They exchange shots with a few who pass too close. Houses don’t really mean security. They have to constantly keep watch. Some older guy comes by with a dog, asks for food. Says he’s a septon. Septs don’t exist anymore. They chase him off but they don’t shoot him because he’s not visibly armed. The dog barks at them as they go. She misses dogs.

She tries not to think about what life was like before. No point. Can’t go back to it. Everyone’s dead anyway. But she thinks about her dad who was so good and kind. She thinks about her mother who used to get so frustrated with her but who still loved her. Robb. Jon. Sansa. Bran, Rickon. Her family. Her dog. The little house they’ve temporarily claimed has a bottle of tequila shoved beneath the sink in the kitchen. They trade sips and she tells him about Nymeria. She’s probably already told him all about the dog before. If she has he doesn’t mention it. Just listens. Neither of them drink enough to get anything more than buzzed. Can’t risk it.

Some of the scavs they ran off come back in the middle of the night in an SUV with a big metal plow welded to it. “Mad Max fuckers,” she growls as they quickly throw as much of their shit as they can back into their car and leave. The bullets and medical supplies come first. She ends up leaving some pants behind. It sucks. They weren’t bloodstained yet. He doesn’t get the reference.

They keep moving. They weren’t expecting to stay much longer anyway.

The sat radio finally breaks. It was a long time coming. Years of being tossed into and being grabbed out of bags. Being dropped on accident by both of them, though her more than him. Who knows how old it was when they got it from Yoren. One day it just stops holding a charge no matter how long they leave it plugged into the solar panel. Lasts for about a week after that before it won’t turn on anymore.

He doesn’t react much. Just turns off the alarm on their phone. Sighs. When they stop in the middle of the day to take a break, they fuck and it’s hard. Bruising. His hips slam painfully into hers. He’s got her on her back laying against the hood of the car. The metal is hot beneath her skin. Her legs squeeze his waist. He wraps his hand around her throat to keep her from crying out. Presses down whenever she starts so the sound comes out as a wheeze. Can’t risk making too much noise. They’re out in the open. It hurts all over. Her cunt and her hip and her back and her lungs. He jerks as if burnt when she starts weeping. Stops touching her, backs away. Puts distance between them and says her name. His voice is soft, cautious. Wary. She cries harder. She wants to stop but can’t. “Don’t,” she says. And, “please.” He looks like he’s going to be sick until she grabs his hands and puts them back to her throat. He doesn’t get it until she pulls him closer and leans back on the car. Whimpering. Her hips shift needily. She’s still crying. When he does get it he presses harder. He gets back inside her and she wraps her legs around him so he can't leave again. "Please," she gasps around his chokehold until he's fucking her as roughly as he had been before. "Please." Her orgasm feels painful, like it’s dragged from her by fish hooks. She doesn’t think he comes. She cries the whole time he cleans them up. She doesn't know why. She’s not sad or anything. She just can’t stop.

She does, eventually. Afterwards he holds her. She doesn’t want to be held, except she does. She feels confused and weirdly stretched on the inside. Not in her groin but in her heart. He hurt her but she liked it. He stopped but she wanted it. Is that love? Is that what love is? They don’t kiss. They don’t touch beyond his arms around her. Her ear against his chest. He keeps his hands to himself. The Linebaugh is within arm’s reach. Her bat is close by. Even vulnerable they’re never defenseless. They don’t talk until they do.

“I’m sorry,” she says even though she’s not really sure what for. But she thinks she’s sorry for something. The radio? No, she can’t help that. Crying? She can’t help that either. She tried to stop but couldn’t. She doesn’t know what she’s sorry for but she knows she is.

He sighs. It’s the same sigh he’d made when the radio broke. Like he was disappointed but accepting because he knew it was coming. “Oh, lovely girl,” he murmurs and his voice seems so very sad. Maybe that’s what she’s sorry for. Making him sad. “What has a man done to you?”

She doesn’t understand. He’s never done anything to her that she didn’t want, didn’t ask for. He stops when she tells him to stop. He keeps her happy. Why does he think he’s done something to her? She doesn’t know what he’s done. Apparently neither does he.)

* * *

They go back West. They never stick around the Stormlands for long when they pass through. Scavs congregate in the Southeast. Wights are easier to handle. Last she’d heard there were some Lannisters still in Lannisport but that outpost is relatively small and they don’t get a lot of support. Might have been overrun already. The Western coast is safer than the Eastern one. She misses the cold, even if it’s not practical. Summer in the South is sweltering. She hasn’t been North since she was so young. She doesn’t remember what snow feels like. She just knows she used to like it. Easy to romanticize what she can’t remember.

Old Oak was a small town even before the end of the world. Population in the thousands. Most of the wights have spread out and away in search of food and most of the buildings have already been picked clean of scavs come before them. They still stop and search. Hope springs eternal.

He’s been a little standoffish since the radio broke. He doesn’t like having his routine upset. It’s been a few weeks and he still twitches whenever the clock rolls around to that time of day as if he’s going to try it. They haven’t had sex in a while either. He kisses her more often than he used to but slows to a stop when she tries to go further. It’s the longest they’ve gone without getting each other off somehow since they started sleeping together. She’s not sure what she did wrong and can’t help but feel like it’s her fault somehow. She doesn’t know if she’s more hurt by it or if she’s just angry.

They walk into the town. Stash the car somewhere in a parking lot filled with other abandoned junkers. Unlikely that anyone is passing through at the same time they are but stupid to risk leaving all their stuff sitting out in the open if they find a place to loot. They’ll carry what they can in their backpacks and hide everything else to come back for with the car once they’ve finished scouting. She’s got the Linebaugh and the bat, he’s got the shotty and the rifle and the machete. He’d handed her his combat knife before they got out of the car. Useless against wights, getting close enough to stab into their brain is too close, but nice if she has to cut through or into something.

The streets are empty. The forlorn sound of wind blowing through hollow buildings with busted-in doors and jagged windows. No croaking or gurgling or shuffling. There are wights somewhere, certainly. But not on the roads.  _ Reaching _ while moving is difficult, disorienting. Her perspective shifts constantly. Easier to pause and do it but awkward. She puts a hand on his arm when she does it, walks when he walks and lets him lead her over fallen signposts and between rusted-out cars. She can’t feel anything within her radius. She’s not entirely sure what her radius is because sometimes she can  _ reach _ further than other times. She doesn’t know why that is, either. It just is.

When she’s determined that the current block is empty they split up. They’ll stay within earshot but their tactic is usually get in and out as quickly and quietly as possible. They scout as they go. He ducks into a pharmacy whose door has been knocked off its hinges and she picks a feed and seed store. These old yokel towns are filled with shops like this where amateur farmers from the countryside would bring their backyard crops to sell and trade. The shop is broken down and musty. She sneezes into her elbow as quietly as she can. There’s a little hutch filled with rabbit skeletons beside the till and dried stale hay and tufts of fur litter the floor.

Nothing much of interest. She gets some rope, a pair of wire cutters. A hatchet. There’s a wall of what seems to be jars of pickled vegetables but when she gets closer it seems to have been picked over already and what’s left is the rancid remains of things that weren’t sealed within the mason jars properly. She goes behind the till. Sometimes in old mom and pop shops they kept a gun by the register. If the owners of this one did then someone else has already made off with it. There’s a drink cooler towards the back of the store. It’s not working anymore, obviously. But there’s some pop in those old fashioned glass bottles that seems to have survived the apocalypse. She pops the top on one with her Lyseni knife. It fizzes very lightly but doesn’t give off much odor. The taste is slightly flat but undeniably pop. She closes her eyes. Barely restrains from guzzling it. She misses pop. She misses sugar and candy and gross processed food. She misses a lot of things. She just doesn’t usually give herself the time or opportunity to remember them. There’s a small handful left in the cooler but they don’t have space to carry around something so incredibly lacking nutrition. Neither of them have hypoglycemia and water is more important. She still takes a bottle and shoves it into her pack to give to him when they meet back up. Maybe it’ll make him smile again.

She doesn’t know why he’s upset with her. Normally she can read him pretty well. It was trial and error at first, but they’ve been together for years. Usually they don’t need to talk to understand each other. Usually she can just look at him and tell what’s wrong. But he’s been distant since the radio broke. Stupid. No one was ever going to answer anyway. The hope of it must have been powerful for him. He’s not sentimental but he still tried it everyday like he expected something to happen. She gets it, sort of. She kept asking for news about the North even after the shit with the Freys. That never got her anywhere.

He shouldn’t take that out on her though.

After she gets what little of value is left from the feed and seed store she  _ reaches _ out and touches him. He’s still in the pharmacy. He broke into the back where the prescription shit is. Picked the lock. That room hasn’t been messed with by anyone else yet. She digs in just a little, to get his attention. Feels him acknowledge her. That’s what they do when they split up. How she lets him know when she’s ready to move on. He can’t feel her the way she feels him when she  _ reaches _ but she can send him little impressions. Tiny thoughts, vague emotions. Not words really. She can’t talk to people when she digs into them. Wights are different because they think less, they’re emptier. She can tell them to do things sometimes. They don’t always listen, but they usually hear.

He thinks he’ll probably be where he is for a while and because he thinks it she can feel it. When she’s touching him can he feel that she’s upset? Would he care if he could? He’s not sentimental. It doesn’t matter. He feels warm and she doesn’t want to pull away but she does.

The next store on the block is a grocer. Half the shelves have fallen over and the floor is stained from a dozen different liquids being spilled across it. She probably won’t find anything here but it never hurts to look. There’s human bones scattered across the floor three aisles down. A femur, what she thinks is an ulna. Half a hipbone and a couple ribs. The better part of a spine broken into pieces. A skull, or most of one. The teeth are punched out and the back of it is blasted apart. Someone shot in the head and either wights or animals took care of the corpse. Who knows how long it’s been there. Bugs could have stripped it down pretty quick. There’s scraps of fabric, the remnants of clothing. Dogs or coyotes probably tore it apart. A jacket a few feet away. She goes through the pockets and finds a half-emptied pack of cigarettes and a cheap plastic lighter. The lighter still has juice in it. She flicks it until the flame lights to make sure it still works and then shoves it in her own pocket. Something inside the jacket moves. When she drops it a mouse scurries out from a hole in the lining.

Nothing in the grocer worth taking except some toothpaste and some canned dog food. People always forget about hygiene. She probably wouldn’t have taken it into much consideration herself if he weren’t so anal retentive about it. The dog food they can eat in a pinch but it’s not the first preference by any means.

As she’s walking out she sees a glasses kiosk by the door. Stops to peruse. There’s a pair of sunglasses with wide aviator-style frames that fit her face and are only slightly crooked. She can bend the frame back into place, probably. She slips them on and looks at herself in the little cracked mirror of the kiosk. Wrinkles her nose and takes them off, puts them back in their stand. Leaves the grocer. Deliberates for a moment and then goes back for them, slides them onto the top of her head with a bit of a smile.

Sometimes it’s the little things.

She  _ reaches _ again. Lets him know she’s moving on. He’s still in the pharmacy. He found a book on identifying pills and what their uses are and is going through some of the medicine to decide what’s worth taking. She never digs deep enough with him to hear his thoughts. Just enough to get her own impressions, his intents. It feels weird and private to her in a way it doesn’t with other people. Sometimes she wants to though. She thinks it’d be enlightening. She pulls back slightly. Enough so that she’s still touching him but not slipping in. Can he hear her? She waits for a moment. Warmth and sharpness, ginger and cloves. He’s a liar. If he can hear her he doesn’t answer. She draws away.

The next store is the last one on her side of the block. The used bookstore smells like mold and rot. A different kind of rot than old meat. As in the grocer half the shelves are knocked down and their contents dashed across the floor. The pages in all of the books have either molded completely or congealed into mush from years of exposure to the rain through the broken windows of the storefront. She checks behind the till, feels a giddy thrill race up her spine when she finds a false bottom to one of the drawers beneath the register. There’s a tiny little pocket pistol inside with a box of bullets. She checks it to see if it’s loaded. It is. The safety is on. She doesn’t mess with it. He’ll take it apart later and see if it’s in working condition. She could shoot it, but she hasn’t checked beyond this block for wights and doesn’t want to draw attention with the noise. Fuck yeah. Finally a gun she can use.

Excited from her find she moves on through the bookstore. There’s a second floor that’s faired a bit better than the first. The books and carpet all stink with mildew but they’re not visibly moldy yet. The paperback covers are water stained and the pages are yellow but crisp when she trails her finger across a row of spines. The store isn’t organized the way books typically are. They’re sorted by genre but not alphabetized by author. There doesn’t seem to be a rhyme or reason for where the genres are placed either. It’s a mishmash, a hodgepodge. Shitty unframed paintings line the walls. Kids drawings. Photographs of the town. In the back corner on the second floor is the kid’s section and there’s a little area with tiny plush chairs and beanbags that she wouldn’t dare sit in for fear of disturbing whatever bacteria is cultivating in the fabric. The colors are bright pastels. Girl-pinks and boy-blues. Beside one of the chairs is a tiny dog bed with  _ JEYNE _ drawn in glitter paint on the front. At least, she thinks the name is Jeyne. One of the capital E’s has chipped away to look more like a T but Jeynt makes less sense than Jeyne. She wonders what kind of dog Jeyne was.

Somebody loved this place, once.

On the back of one of the upright bookshelves on the first floor is a makeshift bulletin board. She’d missed it when she passed by the shelf because it was facing the other way. On the board are tacked notes, printed photos, saved from water damage by the position of the shelf. Messages on the wood scrawled in marker. She thinks it’s just another cutesy gimmick of the store until she gets closer and can read them. A dozen goodbyes. Names, dates. Some RIPs. Her eyes skim.  _ J, meet me at ma’s place, S. _ Another.  _ DANN, TOOK THE KIDS TO RIVERRUN LOVE YOU. _ Another.  _ RIP hoster mother show him mercy. _ Another.  _ ITS NOT AIRBORNE!! DONT LET THEM BITE YOU!! _ Another.  _ Fuck whites! _ And that’s crossed out in another marker’s color to say  _ *wights _ . Another. Tiny, pinched into the corner of the board.  _ we deserve this. _

Another. A photo of a woman and a little boy, smiling at the camera. They both have dark brown hair and big blue eyes and look so happy. They look happier than she remembers anybody looking in a really long time. The boy is missing some teeth and the woman is grinning so widely her eyes are scrunched. It doesn’t look fake like some smiles in pictures do. Written in Sharpie at the top of the picture, contrasting against the blue sky, is  _ have you seen me? _ Drawn directly on the board there’s an arrow pointing to the picture that says  _ at lannisport. _

She remembers when she was a kid her mother tried to take pictures of her like this and she’d put on the biggest, dumbest fake smile she could until her mom left her alone. Are there any pictures out there of her as a child? Of her family? Did Robb put photos of her and Sansa up somewhere like this hoping someone would pass by and leave information for him? Did any of them try to find her after her father died? After King’s Landing went dark? Did anyone care?

Sometimes she forgets. After all the people she’s seen die. After all the people he’s killed and she’s killed. After all the people that have tried to kill them. Sometimes she forgets they actually are people. They had families. Hopes and dreams. Things they wanted to do with themselves and their lives before the world went to shit. All the wights were people. They were all people. All of them. Saints and sluts and alcoholics and vegans and factory workers and CEOs and idiots and geniuses and artists and nurses and stupid little kids with goody two-shoes laywer dads and weird foreigners who were probably hitmen. They were all just people.

She takes the picture, trades it for the sunglasses. Hangs them on one of the thumbtacks. Sentimental. Stupid girl. She leaves the bookstore feeling melancholy despite finding the gun.

When she gets back outside the bookstore she hesitates.  _ Reaches _ . No wights along the next block either. Maybe they’ve all already left this town or maybe they’re stuck inside the heart of it. A lot of smaller towns blocked off buildings, made barricades. Banks and community centers and police departments were popular ones. Tried to hide inside and wait it out. Starved or killed themselves. Turned. Made a hive on accident. Regardless, the outskirts of Old Oak seem to be empty. This part of them, at least.

He’s probably still at the pharmacy. He’d thought he was going to be there a while. She feels raw inside from reading the messages. She’s still hurting from his treatment for the last few weeks. It doesn’t seem like he has much inclination to explain himself to make up for it. She doesn’t check in with him before she moves on to the next street. It’s fine. There aren’t any wights, aren’t any scavs. Nothing she needs to worry about. He’s preoccupied. He’ll probably be happy she took initiative without interrupting his focus. She keeps going.

A restaurant. Nothing in there will be of much use. Maybe knives but there’s only so many of those they can carry. She checks anyway just to be thorough. There’s a few dead birds inside. Looks like they flew through the broken window and then maybe got stuck and couldn’t figure out how to get back out. She’s glad that animals can’t become wights. There were rumors for a while for the first year, when there were more people, of wight wolves and wight bears up North. But she’s never seen a wight animal. Wights don’t even pay much attention to animals really. Just people. They only want to eat people.

She wonders where wights came from, sometimes. Wondering this is stupid and doesn’t get her anywhere productive. It’s just so strange. People turn into wights when they die. People turn into wights when they get bitten. You don’t even need to have been bitten by one to turn. Just die. Corpses pop back up with blue eyes after a day or two even if they died of something stupid like tripping and breaking their neck. That’s why when they kill people they shoot them in the head afterwards. Something in the brain, she guesses. Maybe it is partially airborne. But how do you make a cure for something that can turn you without you even having been touched by it? Do you just stick corpses too? Stupid Targaryen bitch. Should have stayed in Essos. At least then she’d be alive.

Maybe it’s not a sickness or a disease or anything like that. Maybe it can’t be cured. Maybe it’s magic. The world hasn’t had magic in a long, long time. Maybe this is just what happens when the universe bottles it all up until it explodes.

Ha. Sure. And maybe they’ll wake up tomorrow to a red comet in the sky and dragons will come back too. Stupid bullshit.

They have something of a pact between them. If he gets bitten they’re going to keep him alive for as long as they can so he can keep helping her. Even if it’s only for a day. When he starts feeling hungry she’s going to tie him up somewhere and leave him. Take the car and the supplies and go. They’d argued about that for a while. She doesn’t want to leave him but she doesn’t think she can kill him. She wanted to give him a gun if she left. That way he could take care of himself when he started slipping away. She doesn’t like the idea of him as a wight tied to a tree or a fence or a pole, forever cold and forever hungry. She knows what wights feel and she doesn’t want that for him. But she doesn’t think she could kill him either. He doesn’t want her to leave a gun. Stupid to ditch a good weapon just for sentiment. He’s not sentimental. It’s just meat and blood to him. She doesn’t like to think about it. She’s not going to let him die. He can’t die. She needs him.

If she dies, though. Well. She’s immune to the bites. Will she turn when she’s dead? Currently the plan for her is that he’s going to wait and see. She figured that’d be easy for him. What does it hurt him to wait and see? A day, maybe two. They’d argued about that too and she doesn’t really know why. What’s the alternative? Is he going to take the time to bury her? That’s stupid. He’s not a stupid man. He’s practical. It’s not like he’s killing her. She’ll already be dead. Why not just wait a day to find out if she gets back up? It’d be easy. If she starts moving again he just shoots her. He could do it a lot easier than she could. She knows he can. She’s not offended by it. It’s not personal. She gets it. He’s not sentimental and she’s just meat and blood too. He’d gotten so mad when she’d said that though. Just looked at her like she was an idiot. Stupid girl.

Whatever. She’s not going to die. Not today. She doesn’t find anything in the restaurant.

Next down the line is a hardware store. This is less picked over than the grocer was but still not exactly bountiful. She finds some screwdrivers to replace the ones they had in their kit that got left behind when they fled the little house in the Stormlands. She’d been harvesting the batteries from old electronics when the raiders came back for them. A pipe wrench. Cliche but fuck if it doesn’t work to bash a wight’s head in. Bolt cutters. Good for breaking the chains on garages and sheds. Faster than picking locks. She has to carry the cutters, they won’t fit into her backpack. They’re heavier than they look and she leaves them by the door to come back for when they’ve retrieved the car. A second hose for siphoning. They should have replaced the lost one a long time ago but it wasn’t really necessary. Just a convenience. He likes to kiss her after spitting out a mouthful of petrol. The way her face twists makes him laugh.

He’s been kissing her more lately. Softer, slower. Like he’s taking his time with it. Like he wants her to take her time, too. He puts his hands on her face and in her hair. Kisses her mouth and cheeks and nose. No tongue. Nothing sexually really. Just kissing. Just his lips on her. Her lips on him. They kiss when they fuck usually but it isn’t like an arbitrary activity. Not sentimental. Kisses have purpose. They’re meant to inflame. To make her want more. They aren’t just there. Except now apparently they are and she doesn’t know how she’s supposed to reconcile that with the fact that he doesn’t seem to want to have sex anymore.

But. Kissing is good. She likes kissing him. They went days without kissing before and now he kisses her forehead when he wakes her up for her watch. Leans over and kisses her cheek when she’s driving. Holds her close and kisses her shoulders and wrists if  _ reaching _ makes her shake. She misses the feeling of him inside of her, of his tongue against her clit, his grip on her ass when he fucks her from behind. But the kissing is good too. She wishes they could find a happy medium of the two. It would be less confusing if he would just talk to her about it. But they don't really talk unless they need to. So it's probably not that important. It feels important to her, but it must not be for him.

There’s a backroom in the store. The door is shut but not locked. She  _ reaches _ . Didn’t feel anything earlier, but checks again just in case. Nothing in the room. When she tries to open the door it’s heavy. Like something is pushing against the other side. There’s give so she knows she can open it but she has to put all her weight into several hard shoves before the opening between the door and the frame is wide enough for her to slip through.

When she gets on the other side the room smells like fetid meat and flies swarm the air, buzzing around her in a cloud and making her jump back with a gasp of surprise. There’s a wight inside with its lower jaw missing. She lifts the Linebaugh on instinct before realizing its open blue eyes are dull and there’s blood and gore in a splatter on the wall behind it. The thing that had been against the door is a dead body. A woman slouched to the side from where the door opening had pushed her over, the back of her head cracked open and brain peeking out. Not a wight. She’s been dead for a while, half-rotted and split apart by bloat. Maggots leak from an open lesion in her throat. There’s a shotgun in her arms, covered in dried black blood.

She can only assume the circumstance. The woman was certainly a scav like herself. Maybe opened the door and found the wight. Shot it in the head but tripped over her own feet, fell backwards and brained herself against the doorknob. Nobody’s fault. Shitty luck. Sometimes you do everything right and it still doesn't matter.

The tiny room reeks of death. The sickly-sweet smell of hot rancid meat. She folds her sleeve over her nose. Her eyes are watering. Gods if there’s anything in here then she almost doesn’t want it. Practicality makes her search anyway. She breathes only when she absolutely must and tastes it on the roof of her mouth. Sheer will and spite keeps her from vomiting. There’s a desk in the room that the wight is draped over. She toes it to the side and gags when the body lands on the floor with a wet splat. Papers in the drawers. A pocket knife. A walkie talkie which might be useful if its mate were also there. More papers. Nothing useful. Wait. She picks up the walkie talkie and inspects it. It looks familiar. Not a walkie talkie. A sat radio.

Of a different brand than their old one. It’s newer, has buttons and a screen instead of a dial to change the frequency. She flips it around excitedly to find the charge port and lets out a gasp of laughter when she sees that it has the same input. They can charge it with the solar panel. She holds the power button and prays, bites her lip. The screen flickers briefly. Lights up. The critical battery icon flashes but that’s fine. That means it’ll turn on. She runs from the hardware store. Nearly forgets her backpack in her haste, doubles back to grab it. Stops very briefly to _ reach _ , but there’s nothing there, nothing between her and where they’d parked the car. Gods what a lucky find. What a lucky day. No wights. A gun and a radio. Maybe a shotgun too if he can get the one the woman had cleaned.

She climbs through the open passenger window. Roots around for the solar panel. She only needs to charge it for a few minutes. Just to see if it’ll work. She doesn’t want to get his hopes up by showing it to him and then finding out it won’t work. She plugs it in. Her hands are shaking. After a moment a little light to the side of the screen flares up yellow. It’s charging. She laughs again in astonished delight.

A shout makes her drop the radio and the solar panel into her lap. She startles, looks around with wide eyes. He’s yelling her name. There’s panic in his voice. Why is he yelling? What the fuck? That’ll bring any wight in hearing distance straight for him. If he’s in trouble why is he not shooting? She drops the radio and the panel into the seat. Vaults back out the window. She  _ reaches _ as she runs, stumbles a few steps. Nearly trips. Discord inside when she touches him. He’s fine, he’s not hurt. She thinks? His heart is pounding and his blood is racing. She doesn’t dig in but there’s just  _ so much _ of him in this moment that she doesn’t have to to hear him.  _ Where is she where where lovely girl I can’t _ \--

When he feels her  _ reaching _ , touching him, his reactive relief is very literally breathtaking. She has to stop to double over and force air into her lungs. He’s outside the bookstore she’d last checked in at. She’d run down the other street one block over to get back to the car. She lets him know she fine. What's going on? Why is he yelling?  _ Couldn't find you where what if she's hurt sweet girl mine _ \-- It's overwhelming. She doesn't know if it's because he's that upset or because they've spent so much time in such close proximity or because she knows him so well without having to  _ reach _ that  _ reaching _ becomes more intense. There's a lot about her ability that she doesn't know. She pulls away from him. She can't stay inside. Her pulse is erratic with sympathetic anxiety, his fear compounding on her own until it creates a feedback loop of panic.

She's stopped running. It doesn’t matter, he’d started running as soon as he felt her. She's leaning against the wall of the pharmacy she'd left him in and trying to catch her breath. Trying to calm the frantic beating of her heart. The  _ fear _ in him. She didn't know he could feel that much. She didn't know anyone could feel that much. Meat and blood. Walking, talking, shitting buckets of meat and blood. He's not sentimental. He doesn't assign things or people more importance than they're worth. Why was he so afraid?

When he reaches her he grabs her arms. Pulls her away from the wall and checks her over. Hands on her face and shoulders, stomach, thighs. "What is  _ wrong? _ " she asks. She feels confused, off kilter. She passes whatever inspection he'd been conducting. He moves quickly, a hand on her shoulder. Tugging her behind him.

"A girl was not where she said she would be," he hisses. His voice is tight and angry. "Stupid girl. We do not go off alone without telling each other! Has she forgotten the simplest rules of survival?"

She snatches away from him. Shoves him hard in the chest. "You were busy. And I checked first! Do you actually think I'm that stupid?"

There's fury in his eyes but she remembers what she'd felt when she  _ reached _ earlier. Not anger but panic. Fury now to cover the fear. "If a girl did not act so, a man would not think it," he tells her sharply. His voice and his words are knives meant to cut but she clings to that fear she'd felt in him. He glances around them and his face smooths into familiar expressionlessness. "We must move."

She _reaches_. He's right. His shouting had broken the stillness and peace of the dead town and now the dead within it are stirring. Two moving towards them, from further up the street. Two blocks away in the opposite direction they had been going. She can't tell without touching them if they're shamblers or sprinters. As she _reaches_ out she passes over him. Doesn't have to touch to hear him. It's like he's screaming on the inside-- _don't lose her don't keep her close have to keep her close. Don't let her go she would not forgive me keep her don’t let her go keep her don’t let her know just this one thing. She's listening! It doesn't matter she's alive keep her just this one thing let this one thing stay mine--_ and it is so incredibly at odds with the way his face has relaxed into a look of mild neutrality. She stops _reaching_ and falls back into herself. His turmoil is exquisite. Has there been _so much_ of him beneath his placid surface this whole time? "We are compromised."

Again he tries to tug her along and again she shoves him away. She isn't a child! What is wrong? Why is he so upset? They’ve split up before. They do it all the time. "We wouldn't be if you hadn't woken them up! I was  _ fine! _ What the  _ fuck _ is going on with you?"

He whirls to face her, leans in close. Their noses inches apart. His eyes are a storm. " _ I couldn't find you _ ," he snarls. She stares at him in shock. He never talks like that. Never says  _ I _ or  _ you _ . “How am I supposed to find you? If you are hurt, if you need me and you cannot concentrate to reach, how do I know? I cannot do the things that you do. I cannot touch you with my mind.” His internal monologue plays through her mind even though she’s not  _ reaching _ for him. Keep her close. Don’t let her go. Mine.

“I’m here,” she tells him. Doesn’t know if it’s the right thing to say but she says it anyway. “I’m right here.” She takes his hand instead. She won’t let him drag her around behind him but they can go together. They don’t have time for this right now. “Come on,” she says.

They make it to the car. Throw the doors closed behind them just in time for the first wight to round the counter and charge into the parking lot. A sprinter then. It’s missing an arm and seems off-balance, tripping into the side of one of the junkers and ricocheting off the metal body. The door of the car dents beneath the wight’s weight and when it slams against another car the already cracked window breaks with a loud shatter. She shoves the electronics into the backseat before she can sit on them and barely gets her seatbelt on before he’s got them in reverse, backing out of the parking lot far too quickly to be safe. His arm across her seat as he leans to stare out the back window. The wight keeps running for them, towards their accelerating car. A bang as their back bumper meets its torso. A crunch beneath the tires. As he continues driving in reverse they leave a smear of black blood and gooey innards trailing behind them.

She  _ reaches _ .  _ Reaching _ while they drive is almost more difficult than  _ reaching _ while running. Awareness of what’s around her expands and pinpoints all at once. Living things are touched and pulled away with near instance by the increasing of distance. She sits still but the world careens by. He’s a constant at her side. As always. Ginger and cloves. Warmth. Sharpness. Leather and metal. Fear, now, but fading. He’s a liar. She doesn’t know how or why but she knows he is. “There’s another one close,” she warns. “And three more coming.” It probably doesn’t matter. They’re in the car now. Scavs are still dangerous but wights lose a bit of their threat once they’re in the car. They don’t swarm the way they used to.

He says nothing. His hand is tight on the wheel. His face expressionless when he twists to face the front again. Their tires shriek against the pavement of the road as they pull out of the fenced-in parking lot, drifting from their reverse turn into forward motion. The second wight that throws itself at their car from behind the corner of a building he dodges, jerking the wheel to the right. They pass two others, blue eyes wide and rotting hands outstretched towards them hungrily, as they speed across the main road and back out of the town limits.

They’re silent for a while. They’ll come back tomorrow or the day after maybe. Probably the day after. Wights don't have a great attention span but they’ll have been stirred by the commotion. Better to not take chances and just lay low until everything settles back down.

They don’t fight a lot. Necessity and survival demand cooperation. She’s always been more of a firecracker personality than he has but she needs him and she can’t afford to piss him off. She just swallowed down the things that used to irritate her and now she’s so used to it that she just doesn’t get irritated as much. Rows between them are usually about petty shit. They try not to blame each other for the things that can’t be helped. When they do fight neither of them apologize. It used to make her furious but now she just simmers on her anger until it eventually boils down into nothing. She doesn’t know how he copes with his own annoyance. He’ll show her happiness and pleasure in fleeting bursts easily enough but the darker shit he keeps to himself. Locked behind that expressionless face.

She simmers now. She doesn’t know why she’s so angry. He was just concerned. Stupid, because she can take care of herself, but not necessarily bad. It’d be almost endearing if she weren’t angry about it. He’s just been treating her different lately and she doesn’t know why. He acts like she’s fragile now. Won’t fuck her. Calls her stupid for going off by herself when she knows it’s safe. She knew it’d be fine, she  _ knew _ . She  _ reached _ first and he still got mad at her. Won’t fuck her and won’t let her be useful. Why keep her around? His thoughts that she’d gleaned from him earlier run through her head, cyclical. Keep her close. Don’t let her go. Mine. But why? Possessiveness? He’s not sentimental. She knows he’s not. He thinks it’s stupid that she collects things like pictures and drawings and sunglasses. Thinks it’s naive of her to cling to the little bits of humanity when they’re all just buckets of meat and blood one wrong move from turning into a wight.

She’s angry and hurt and she shouldn’t be because she should have expected it but she is and she can’t help it.

They drive for an hour or two. Put some distance between themselves and Old Oak. There’s a farmhouse off the road they’ve stayed in a couple times over the years whenever they’ve passed this way. The walls are covered in peeling graffiti from a time even before the wights. The house’s roof fell in sometime since they were there last and now but the barn is still standing. When they get there she  _ reaches _ and it’s empty. The tumult inside him has calmed enough that she can’t hear him anymore just from the casual pass. She’d have to dig and slip into him to feel what he’s feeling again. She doesn’t. They park the car inside the barn. They’ll shut the big sliding doors behind them when it’s time to sleep.

Light pollution isn’t a thing anymore. She likes being in the Reach because sometimes in the rolling hills she feels like the night sky above is just a big blanket pressing down on her. She feels small in comparison to the vastness of space, the billions of bright stars spinning overhead. Sometimes when they’re in a place that feels safer than others she’ll sit out under the stars and just stare up at them and remind herself that she’s so young and tiny in the grand scheme of things. She’ll die one day and he’ll die one day and then they’ll both probably be wights and maybe they’ll be wights together. Or maybe he’ll be a wight and she’ll be dead and he’ll eat her. That’d be okay too, she thinks. But regardless of what happens to them the stars will keep shining and the sun will keep rising. The resiliency of nature. She hates it except for the times when she loves it.

She stays away from him. Sits outside the barn and stares up at the stars. He’s checking the hay loft to make sure it’s structurally sound. They’ll sleep up there because it’s high off the ground and if any wights do show up they won’t be smart enough to use the ladder. If people show up the higher vantage point will make it easier to fend them off. It’s not sleeping curled up in the backseat of the car so it’s an improvement on their usual. When he’s done he comes out and joins her. The two of them sit quietly side by side, staring up at the night sky. He doesn’t get the same enjoyment out of it that she does. He’s more practical than she is.

After a while he rests his hand on her knee, palm up. Invitation. She’s still angry sort of but she takes it. Keep her close, he’d thought. Mine, he’d thought. He’s been kissing her more lately even if they aren’t having sex. She’s sentimental. She could use a bit of comfort.

“A man apologizes,” he says finally. His voice is soft, pitched low. The weight of the night demands quiet from them. “He was concerned.”

She could use comfort but she’s still angry. “Shitty way of showing it,” she tells him. He called her stupid. Treated her like a kid. She’s not stupid and she’s not a kid. She doesn’t like when he talks to her like that. He doesn’t do it often but that just makes it cut deeper when he does. His jaw tenses at her reply, like he wants to retaliate. He doesn’t. Just nods after a moment. Acknowledgement.

Then, as if the admission pains him, “This man cannot lose you. If he loses you then he loses everything.” She flinches. Turns to look at him in surprise. Suspicion. He’s not sentimental, she’s just useful. He’s clever. He probably already knows she loves him. He’s a liar. She’s known that since the day she met him. He’s just telling her things she wants to hear. He does that sometimes. He knows how to manipulate her. He just usually does it with his cock instead of his words. When he sees her wariness his face softens, gets sadder. He sighs. The same sigh as when the radio broke, as when they’d last had sex. Disappointed but accepting because he knew it was coming. “She does not believe him. She always denies her worth. A man must weep. What can he say to prove this is truth?”

She shakes her head at him. “Nothing,” she tells him honestly. He’s possessive. She’s not denying her worth. She knows she’s useful. She’s not stupid and she can  _ reach _ . She can sense wights before they attack. She can read people’s thoughts, their intentions. She’s a good aim with a gun even if she underestimates the kickback sometimes. Not only does she let him fuck her but she likes it, invites the attention. As long as she stays useful she’s an ideal companion for survival.

He contemplates her answer for a moment, blinks at her. As if assessing the truth. It’s the look he gave her the second time they’d met. When she’d told him about the man with pointed teeth starting to turn. He comes to a decision and nods. “Then perhaps words are not what is necessary.” It takes her a moment to understand his meaning. She bites her lip. Explicit permission to root around in his head. She doesn’t do that. Not with him. Earlier today was the first time she’d heard his thoughts and she hadn’t even meant to. They were just so loud that she couldn’t help it. Tentatively she  _ reaches _ . Feels him feel her. Warmth and sharpness, ginger and cloves on the inside. He’s a liar but he nods his head. She slips in and digs.

Lovely girl. So this is what it feels like? They share him and she lifts their hand to inspect it. She’s only done this with wights before. It’s different, being so deep inside another person. She feels him as if she is him. He needs her.

Aloud, so he can hear and answer her, “What? Why?” He does! Stupid girl, he thought she knew. How can she not know she's his? So clever about certain things and naive about others.“I am not! I’m not a child!” He’s amused. Not a child anymore but naive nonetheless. He shouldn’t have had sex with her so young. He should have been patient, should have waited. “I wanted it! I came onto  _ you! _ ” Yes, but now the act is skewed to her. She measures her worth by it. She misunderstands and he is bad at communication. “Is this about the kissing? Maybe I would understand if you actually talked to me about it!” He knows. He’d hoped the gentler touches could make her happy. He was wrong. He wants to keep her happy. He wants to keep her. His. Mine. Let him have just this one thing, just this girl. Can’t lose her. What if she was hurt? He was afraid when he couldn’t find her. Let him keep her, gods. It is not begging, it is demand. His. Mine.

There is a vicious possessiveness inside him. Mine. It stings for her to touch it. Keep her, mine. He will kill to keep her close. Don't lose her. Keep her close. Keep her happy, if she's happy she'll stay. She has to stay. She's his. She belongs with him. Mine mine mine.

“You love me,” she says, the thought startled from her. He’s a liar but not about this. It is not love as she understands love. It's dark. Dangerous. Possessive. His, mine, keep her. Don't lose her. Don't let her leave. The closest he knows to love. Possessive, mine, want her happy so she stays. Don't hurt her, take care of what's yours. Never had anything before her. Gave it all up. Won't give her up. Keep her. Keep her happy and keep her.

She pulls away. Slides out of him, stops  _ reaching _ . Retreats back into herself. “You love me,” she says again. Almost like she's testing it, the weight of it in her mouth. She doesn't know if it's  _ love _ love and she doesn't have a basis for comparison. Is that what love is? Love is the only word she can think to describe that overwhelming necessity to keep her that fills him.

“He does,” he agrees. “I do.” He leans forward, pulls her towards him with the hand he is still holding. His lips stop just barely pressing against hers. He says her name and it feels like the breath in his lungs. She kisses him.

It’s hard. Forceful. Not the gentle kisses he’s given her in the last few weeks. Something closer to what they usually share. Their teeth knock together. She climbs into his lap. He’s stupid. He thought she was using sex like a transaction. He thought she only liked it rough because he liked it rough and she wanted to please him. She does want to please him. But it pleases her, too. Stupid man. She runs her hands through his hair. It’s shorter than she’s used to from having recently cut it but there’s still enough to grab so she does. She pulls and a growl leaves him in reaction. She likes it. She pulls again. He kisses her hard enough to hurt. She likes that too. She  _ reaches _ out again, sinks into him. He lets her. She feels her lips beneath his, her tongue against his own. His heartbeat is erratic. He loves her. He loves her. Viciously, meanly. Darkly. Not having sex wasn’t a punishment. He just wanted to go slow. Thought she needed it slow. Thought it would make her happy. He wants her happy. Keep her. Mine.

“Stupid man,” she hisses into his mouth. She can hear his thoughts but he can’t hear hers unless she speaks them. She wants him to hear so she does. “Stupid man, I don’t  _ need _ it slow.” Fine. Maybe she doesn’t need it. But he thinks she deserves it. Slow and sweet. Loving. He’s not good at loving. He never learned how. Sometimes he wishes he could do it better. She deserves better. She bites him. It hurts and she feels it but he likes it and she feels that too.  _ Mine _ , he thinks. He bites back.

There’s a brief battle. Neither of them want to stop, neither of them want to pull away. But she needs him inside of her  _ now _ . She leans back and he chases her. She puts a hand on his chest. He stops. He’ll always stop. He likes to be rough because it feels good but he never wants to hurt her. He wants to keep her. He thought he’d hurt her. He thought that’s why she’d cried. He thought he’d scared her or hurt her but she didn’t stop because she didn’t want to disappoint him. Stupid man! “I liked it,” she tells him. She’s never doubted that he would stop if she asked him to but it’s so gratifying to  _ feel _ the truth of it. Absolute. He’s a liar but he can’t lie when she’s inside him like this. “I loved it. It felt good. I love  _ you _ .” He knows. He knows. But it’s so nice for him to hear it. She's his. She'll stay if she loves him. Let him keep her. Don’t leave him. Don’t. “I won’t.”

She unbuttons his pants, unzips them. He’s half hard beneath her and getting harder. She pulls him out. Her fingers! Gods her hands on him. He loves when she touches him. Loves her fingers in his hair, in his mouth, on his cock. Wants to feel them inside him but doesn’t know how to ask. Fuck that’s an interesting thought. Him at her mercy, her fingers in his ass, opening him up. He’s usually only vocal when she sucks him off but maybe she could get him to moan the way she does with her pressing on his prostate. Something to contemplate later.

Her grip tightens and she gasps. She can feel how good it feels when she touches his cock. Like all the feeling in his body has centered on his groin. Sparks in his blood when she touches him. She pumps him, moaning, grinding down onto his thigh between her legs. Another feedback loop, this one of pleasure. His feeding hers feeding his feeding hers until she doesn’t even feel like she’s  _ reaching _ out to him so much as she  _ is _ him. She rubs onto their thigh and tugs at their cock. They’re straining up, hard against her hand, fit into the shape of her palm. Agony to pull away but she’s so empty she’s so, so empty and she wants to get into herself. She cedes control of him so he can help her pull off her own pants and then surges back to the fore to become them again.

She shoves them back onto the ground, a pain in their shoulders from a rock in the grass digging in. She wraps her legs around their waist and slides down. The head of their cock slips between her wet folds, nudging her clit. She feels the hard thick mast of them and the warm wet flesh of her at the same time and  _ oh gods _ being inside him while he’s inside her is going to be-- she impales herself down on them, feels their prick taken in straight to the hilt, their testicles against the swell of her ass. It’s so good. Tight and warm and thick and hot and filling. In the past she’d sort of idly wondered what having a dick would feel like, why sex was such a prevalent thing for men in society when society was still a thing that existed. If this is what it feels like all the time then she understands, sort of.

Feeling herself, vaginal muscles fluttering around them, feeling both her cunt and their cock is too much. Feedback loop. His feeding hers feeding his feeding theirs. She comes within a few thrusts. She’s never come that quickly before. Her orgasm squeezes them like a vice but his flesh doesn’t feel her pleasure like she feels theirs. They’re still them but he takes over, directs their movement but lets her stay inside so she can feel it. He doesn’t understand because he can’t feel it himself but he knows she’s enjoying it, that it’s a good kind of intense. Their hands find her hips, lift and direct. He wants to slow it down so they won’t come so quickly but it’s hard for her to justify it when it feels so good.

He loves feeling her. He loves her skin beneath their hands. Loves the way she slides over them so smoothly when she’s wet. He loves it hard and fast and he loves it gentle and slow too. Anything that’s her. The sounds she makes and the way she tastes. He wants her to be happy. Anything to make her happy, to keep her safe. To keep her. Let him keep her. Don’t let her go.

“I won’t,” she gasps. She rocks her hips down into theirs, feels the connection of flesh on both ends as her ass meets their thighs. She braces her hands against their chest. Grinds and bears down hard. Uses the leverage to ride them. They’re sharing him. Her inside him and using them to pleasure her. It’s so intense. Their cock twitches. What will it feel like to come inside herself? She wants it. She comes again and almost gets it because it’s just so much. The warmth, the wetness, the clenching. They thrust up deeper into her, as far as they can reach in this position. She has to bite her lip against a scream when he puts their thumb against her clit. It’s sensitive from her second orgasm. She has a third almost instantly, tiny and wrung-out. The feedback loop of pleasure has her thighs shaking, her legs quivering.

He wants to kiss her. While she’s recovering, her muscles loose and spine like jelly, he rolls them so that they’re leaning over her. Now her back is against the ground. The rock is still there, just digging into her shoulders now rather than theirs.

She sees the world through two sets of eyes. Her own, dazed and blurry, half-shut from ecstatic agony. Theirs, watching her. Is that what she looks like? She looks beautiful in his eyes. Flushed and panting, mouth open and chest heaving. Her short choppy hair askew and tangled. When she looks like this he never wants to look away.  _ His _ . She's  _ his _ and no one else will ever look at her like this. He will kill to keep her.

Her happiness is  _ his _ . Her love is  _ his _ . Her body, her heart, her clever mind. His. Mine mine mine. No one else. The look on her face when she comes because of him is everything. It's the world. He did that. It is almost as good as her self-satisfied smile when she says something that makes him laugh. Sometimes he laughs just to see her smile like that. It is almost as good as the drowsy glare that she sends him when he shakes her awake for her watch. Almost as good as her beaming grin whenever she catches a fish when they cast their lines into a river. Almost as good as the deadly focus that takes her when she aims a gun in preparation to kill. She could do what he used to do and she could do it well. Take her with him, to Essos, when they come for him. Keep her. If they try to make him leave her behind he'll kill them. He never wants to look away. All that, for him. His.

“How did I not see this?” she gasps. He hooks her legs over their shoulders, bends so that her knees touch her chest. “How did I not know?” When he positions her hips where he wants them and reenters her, their cock reaches further, brushes against that spot inside her directly beneath where her clit is that makes her see stars. Her eyes shut tight, barely able to comprehend what she’s feeling. She didn’t know because he didn’t want her to. He can’t remember why he didn’t want her to. It isn't love the way she knows love and he knows that. It's dark. He never learned how to love the right way. He thought it might scare her off. What an idiot. Part of him thought she already knew. How could she not know? She is the fixed point which he revolves around.

Their thrusts are slow but hard. They’re thick inside her and she knows they’re close to coming because she feels when their balls tighten, drawing up slightly. He presses their forehead to hers and pants into her mouth. Their lungs are aching. Their arms strain from holding themselves up, from holding her legs. Their cock is a smooth, rich glide within her, the fluid of three separate orgasms easing their way. Her nipples are hard, scratching against the inside of her bra. She wishes she could pull him into her, the way she is in him. The both of them feeling both their skins, both their mouths, their breasts and balls, their cunt and cock. It's so intense. They can barely breathe.

They're close. Going to come. He wants to pull out but she won't let them. Feels their balls tighten, their cock swell and twitch. Euphoria when they do. Her fourth orgasm using them as proxy. Deep inside her. Feels the dichotomy of being filled and being emptied. Warmth in her core surrounded them. She comes a fifth time, lazily, an afterthought, a product of the feedback loop of pleasure. Both their bodies shake through it, hers and theirs. Don't leave him. Stay. Let him keep her. She's his. Nowhere in the world she belongs more than with him.

They kiss. She stops  _ reaching _ , pulls away. He stops being them and becomes him again.

Part of it scares her. It's vast and overwhelming. An unkind kind of love. Possessive. Not so much that she is an object because he acknowledges her autonomy, but rather that her wholeness of being belongs to him. Most of her, though. Most of her doesn't care. This life they have is the best she could hope for considering the circumstances. He loves her, such as he can. She loves him. It's enough. It's more than enough. It's everything. She's his and he's hers. He wants to keep her just as much as she wants to be kept.

They trade kisses. She's tired from  _ reaching _ so much. It's not quite as draining to do it with other people as it is with wights. She's not shaking, she's not cold. She's a little hungry, but normal  _ reaching _ -hungry and not wight-hungry. They fumble her legs back into her pants, distracted by each other's mouths. No more sex, not tonight, she doesn't think she could handle it. Kissing just to kiss. Arbitrary. She enjoys it now that she knows the motivation behind it.

He takes first watch. They climb the ladder up to the hayloft and she dozes off with her head in his lap, his fingers in her hair. When she wakes for her watch she has to piss. Her cunt feels sore and used, wet and sticky from her orgasms and him coming inside her. They switch places with a kiss. He must be tired too. He's snoring by the time she's halfway down the ladder.

She goes to the car, opens the back door as quietly as she can to root through their toiletries, her clothes. Baby wipes and a fresh pair of panties because she's soaked through her current ones with the fluids of sex. While she's digging she sees the solar panel and the new sat radio in the backseat. She'd forgotten about it completely. The yellow light is gone and it's blinking green now. It must have charged from the residual energy in the panel, or maybe it had gotten enough sunlight through the car windows as they drove. Another giddy thrill. Gods, what a good day.

She takes the radio and the wipes and the new panties.  _ Reaches _ out, beyond the barn. No wights, no other scavs. Probably a good thing since they'd had sex outside without protection like a couple of idiots. She passes over him as she  _ reaches. _ He's still asleep. Warm and sated. She wonders what he's dreaming but doesn't want to dig in without permission. Maybe she'll ask if she can, tomorrow. She sneaks out quietly through the side door of the barn. Picks her way across the yard to the dilapidated house.  _ Reaching _ tells her there's a snake in the grass and she shoos it away.  _ Move it, _ she tells it. It flicks its tongue, unconcerned, but slithers away obligingly.

She leans against the wall and drops her pants again. Winces when she feels some of his come drip from inside her and down her thighs. She wipes herself clean and wonders if that pharmacy he raided has some Plan B that she can take. Shimmies into the clean underwear and back into her pants again. Makes herself comfortable on the ground against the wall and turns on the radio.

She doesn't feel guilty, not anymore. He'll keep her. She wants to find the frequency he uses all the time, surprise him tomorrow afternoon. It doesn't matter what she hears on the radio. The Freys could be burning Winterfell to the ground and she wouldn't leave him. He wants to take her with him, when they come for him. He won't leave her behind. She won't leave him either. He was right. She belongs with him. She needs him. He's home.

She remembers the channel he always uses. How couldn't she? Until their last radio died she'd seen the numbers almost every day for years. She clicks the button to cycle through them. It takes longer without a dial like the old one had. Sometimes the channels load long enough for snippets of noise to emit from the speakers. White noise. Static. Sometimes the quiet of a dead frequency waiting for a response. She pauses briefly when one of the channels begins playing music. Music. Gods. Their current car doesn't have a working CD player. She misses music. On another channel she picks up a woman speaking a language she doesn't understand. Valyrian maybe? The woman sounds calm and assured, her intonation informative. More static. More white noise. A man's voice, speaking Common. " _ \--ark, Lord-Commander of the Nigh-- _ " She flips through a few more channels before her brows furrow.

Wait.

She cycles back.

" _ \--urging all survivors in the North to come to Winterfell, if you are able. We have space and supplies to accommodate you. We are safe and protected from the wights. If you are hurt, we will give you medicine. If you are hungry, we will feed you. And on my honor as a Stark if you seek asylum with the ulterior motive to do us violence, we will crush you. We-- _ "

Stark. Lord-Commander. The Night's Watch. Winterfell is alive? She takes a ragged breath. She recognizes that voice. The last time she'd heard it was over a radio, too.  _ It'll be alright, little sister. _ A tear drips from her eye before she even realizes she's crying. What the fuck? She clicks the button to speak but it just pips at her. The transmission is prerecorded, not an open line of communication. It probably loops on the frequency continuously.

Keep her, he'd thought. Don't let her go, he'd thought. She belongs with me, he'd thought.

Don't let her know, he'd thought.

She'd brushed it off. Thought he'd been referring to his fear. Don't let her know he's scared, she'd assumed. He's a liar. She knew that from the beginning. It was one of the first things she learned about him. He's a liar.

He never let her mess with the radio.

" _ \--assisting Doctor Daenerys Targaryen in working on a cure. We are preventing the dead from rising again but the bite is still contagious and we strongly urge anyone who believes they may be immune to join us. The cure is synthesized from the blood. Our doors are open to you. Gods be with us all. _ " A long pause, ten seconds of silence. Then, " _ Attention, any who may be listening. This is Jon Stark, Lord-Commander of the Night's Watch. The Watch has not ended and we are urging all survivors in the North to come to Winterfell, if you are able. We have space-- _ "

She turns the radio off.

Stupid girl.

* * *

She goes back into the barn. Puts the radio in her backpack. Her hands aren't shaking anymore and she's stopped crying. She feels tired and empty. She  _ reaches _ and doesn't feel any wights. She climbs back up the ladder. He's warm when she lays down beside him and he murmurs sleepily, the quiet nonsense of dreams. His hand grips her sleeve loosely when she rests her head on his chest and listens to his heartbeat. It sounds the same as it always has.

The next morning he can tell something is wrong despite her best attempts to pretend everything is normal. They don't talk and for the first time in a very long time the silence between them is not companionable. When midmorning has passed into afternoon and he hasn't started packing to leave she knows he intends for them to stay for the day and head back into Old Oak tomorrow. They have an early lunch.

"Lovely girl," he says quietly. His eyes are concerned. When he kisses her it tastes like the cereal bar he'd eaten, granola and raspberry preserves.

She pushes him down, _ reaches _ out, slips into him. Worry. Was it too much? Was he too honest? Did it scare her? Keep her, his. Mine. Fix it. Take care of what's yours. She rides him slow and long, stays inside him and listens. A mirror of their sex the day before. As if she’s trying to fuck her way back into that bliss. She loves him. She loves him. She fucking hates him. She has these thoughts idly, as if from a distance. Viewing them through a lens without actually feeling them. She doesn’t feel anything at all. He's so thick, so consuming. It doesn't matter. She'd hoped it would but she still feels empty inside. She cried everything out last night.

Afterwards she stops  _ reaching _ and he pulls her into his lap. Kisses her cheeks, her nose, her eyelids. They're naked, skin to skin. The closest two people can get to becoming one. She tucks her head beneath his chin. It still feels like safety, like home, when he holds her. Why is that? She wishes it didn't.

They dress. Inside his pack their phone begins to buzz. She'd turned the alarm back on last night. He frowns, confused, when he draws it out. Turns it off and looks at her with a raised brow. Without speaking she pulls the sat radio out of her own pack. His eyes widen for the briefest of moments before his entire expression flattens and becomes impenetrable. She sets the radio down onto the floor of the hayloft in front of him. When he doesn't move beyond the slow, even breaths that make his chest rise she reaches out to turn it on herself. She hasn’t changed the frequency since last night. Jon's voice fills the space between them.

" _ \--currently we are assisting Doctor Daenerys Targaryen in working on a cure. We are preventing the dead from rising again but the bite is still contagious and we strongly urge anyone who believes they may be immune to jo-- _ "

He picks the radio up. Begins flipping rapidly through frequencies. His face is still frighteningly blank.

"I found it yesterday." Her voice is soft. "How long have you known?" He doesn't answer her. She nods. Answer enough. Keep her, he'd thought. Kill to keep her close. She belongs with him. What a dark and possessive love. "Were you ever going to tell me?" Again no answer. He settles on a frequency. His normal one. Clicks the microphone twice. Pip pip. The static is familiar. She nods again.

She rises. Picks up her pack. Puts a hand inside it. Just in case. He stills for a brief moment, holds his breath. "I'm taking the car," she tells him. Her voice is still soft. So, so soft. "You can keep the shotgun. And the radio, if you want. I don't need it."

Finally he looks up at her. Still no expression. Yesterday when he'd been so expressionless his thoughts had been frantic, panicked. She wonders what he's thinking now. Doesn't  _ reach _ . She doesn't want to know. After a long moment his eyes darken. He sets the radio to the side and he rises slowly. "Lovely girl," he says. His own voice is placating. And beneath that placation, a warning. Dark, possessive. He'd kill to keep her, she thinks. He reaches for her.

She draws the Linebaugh from her pack. Fast. He taught her to be fast. Aims it at him. "My name is Arya Stark," she says. She feels calm. Eerily so. "What's yours?"

* * *

(He stares into her eyes. The same expression as when their first radio died. Disappointed but accepting because he knew it was coming. Her finger is on the trigger. It would be easy. She could do it. She thought about it last night. She needs him less than she thought she did.

Meat and blood. Buckets of meat and blood.

It'd be easy.

The static breaks. His emotionless face cracks for one brief moment. His eyes flick to the radio. She still has the gun trained on him but she looks at it as well.

Quiet. Not static.

Three clicks.

Pip pip pip.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it doesn't get you anywhere.


End file.
